Old Hampshire Mapped
Norden's Hampshire
Descriptive Texttext
The transcriptions have been made as accurately as possible, given limited access to the British Library, London. It has not been possible to make a second set of journeys to proof read the result; but the transcription was done by two people, one reading, one writing, the reader checking the written work as much as practical.
There were some particular problems: forgive any naivety in these comments, we are not experts in palaeography. With some letters, w and f are worst, it is difficult to know when it is a capital letter. Punctuation is irregular, and some marks look to be little more than rests of the pen! At least two hands seem to have been involved in writing the manuscript. Much is written in a relatively straightforward hand, to modern eyes. This we believe to be written by John Norden. The other hand is a formal clerk's hand of the same period, with its origins in strict letter forms, which have become modified, and more obscure to our eyes. The mixture is most obvious in the alphabetical lists, where both hand might have written different parts of one entry. This is confusing when the letter forms of the two hands conflict!
In the transcriptions the arrangement by lines is mostly ignored. Where it is retained a newline is shown by [Spc][slash][Spc].
first part
