Tuesday 18 February 2014 – John Schofield and John Wall – Virtual St Paul’s Cathedral and Paul’s Cross

0142-3cranes-320John Schofield (Cathedral Archaeologist, St Paul’s Cathedral) and Professor John Wall (North Carolina State University)

Venue: Athlone Room (102), 1st Floor, Senate House, Malet Street (or live online at Live Stream)

Time: Tuesday 18 February 2014, 5.15 PM (GMT)

Abstract: This paper is in two parts. First, John Schofield, the Cathedral Archaeologist for St Paul’s Cathedral, describes both recent conventional and digital attempts to reconstruct the medieval St Paul’s Cathedral, which preceded the present building by Christopher Wren. Second, John Wall, of North Carolina State University, describes a newly-completed project to recreate the public preaching place of Paul’s Cross, which lay to the north-east of the cathedral, in the early 17th century, and to provide the experience of listening to a sermon by John Donne, from various locations near the Cross. Schofield provided the information for reconstruction of the cathedral and St Paul’s Churchyard. Aspects of the experience will be demonstrated. We report on issues raised by these research ventures, such as authenticity, attempts to make models less than pristine, and how the work itself creates new questions for archaeologists, historians, literature professors and software developers to address.

You can find out more about Virtual St Paul’s at http://vpcp.chass.ncsu.edu/

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