27 May 2011
Fired with enthusiasm from yesterday’s meeting, am today trying to write an article for the World Heritage Site newsletter on the forthcoming project and its motivations. Not quite sure what note to strike: the first version turned out a bit dry and academic, and wouldn’t easily alter – so ended up writing a second full version.
Documentary research never ceases to fascinate me – how texts I’ve been looking at for years still end up capable of providing some new snippet of information one’s always over looked before. It's all down to coming back to the texts asking a slightly different question. An excellent example today, while researching for the newsletter article. I checked what Farrer’s History of Ripon (1801) had to say about Quebec and realised for the first time that its reference to small cannons at the site is in the past tense. I had been under the impression that they were still there in the nineteenth century, and had even wondered if they were a post-Aislabie addition – obviously not. Later guidebooks still include references to them, but there was clearly a lot of cribbing from earlier works going on.
Interesting that the guns went before 1801. In the 20 years prior to this there were other changes in the gardens, mainly relating to increasing numbers of visitors. Perhaps the guns were removed for safety. Maybe they were even pinched!
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