Skip over main navigation
  • Log in
  • Basket: (0 items)
Hereford Cathedral
  • Donate
  • Contact Us
  • Twitter
Menu
  • Visit Us
    • Opening times
    • Accessibility
    • Shop
    • How to get to us
    • Cathedral Café
    • Cathedral tours
    • Garden tours
    • Tower tours
    • Group visits
    • Mappa Mundi and Chained Library exhibition
    • Ascension
  • Music and Worship
    • Music lists
    • Pew sheets
    • Webcasts
    • Livestreamed services
    • Organ concerts
    • Sermons
    • Cathedral Reflections
    • Request a prayer
    • Choirs
    • Choral and organ scholarships
    • Organists
    • Organs
    • Visiting choirs
  • Library and Archives
    • Library and Archives
      • Visiting the library
      • Reading Room and Lending Library
      • Archives & Historical Collections
      • Virtual Library Portal
      • Special Exhibitions
    • Mappa Mundi
    • Magna Carta
    • Chained Library
  • Education
    • Life and Learning
    • Schools programme
    • Eastern Cloisters Project
    • Violet Plaques
    • St Thomas Way
  • News and Events
    • News
    • Events
    • Vacancies
  • Support Us
    • Hereford Cathedral Perpetual Trust
    • The Friends of Hereford Cathedral
    • Donate now
    • Stewardship
    • Volunteering
  • About Us
    • Our history
    • Who’s who
    • Eco Church
    • Out of the Cloisters
    • Cathedral Cuttings
    • Bells and Ringing
    • Partners
    • Diocese
    • Armed Forces Covenant
    • Organisation and Accounts
    • Fabric
  • Safeguarding
    • Safeguarding
    • Community Resources
  • Admin
    • Log in
  • Basket: (0 items)
  • Mappa Mundi

Mappa Mundi

The Mappa Mundi has its own interactive website, which can be explored here.

For information on visiting Mappa Mundi and Chained Library click here.

A film about Mappa Mundi which includes close-up images and an explanation of some of its imagery by Sarah Arrowsmith, former Head of Schools and Family Learning, is published on the History West Midlands website. You can view the film here.

Hereford Cathedral Library and Archives holds the papers of Professor Valerie Flint concerning her uncompleted book The Hereford Map Pilgrimage: Politics and Power in Thirteenth-Century England, which can be downloaded here.

For information on visiting the Mappa Mundi & Chained Library click here.

The Hereford Mappa Mundi is unique in Britain’s heritage; an outstanding treasure of the medieval world, it records how 13th-century scholars interpreted the world in spiritual as well as geographical terms.

The map bears the name of its author, ‘Richard of Haldingham or Lafford’ (Holdingham and Sleaford in Lincolnshire). Recent research suggests a date of about 1300 for the creation of the map.

Mappa Mundi is drawn on a single sheet of vellum (calf skin) measuring 64 × 52 inches (1.58 × 1.33 metres), tapering towards the top with a rounded apex. The geographical material of the map is contained within a circle 52 inches in diameter and reflects the thinking of the medieval Church with Jerusalem at the centre of the world.

Superimposed on to the continents are drawings of the history of humankind and the marvels of the natural world. These 500 or so drawings include of around 420 cities and towns, 15 Biblical events, 33 plants, animals, birds and strange creatures, 32 images of the peoples of the world and 8 pictures from classical mythology.

Christopher de Hamel, a leading authority on medieval manuscripts, has said of the Mappa Mundi, ‘… it is without parallel the most important and most celebrated medieval map in any form, the most remarkable illustrated English manuscript of any kind, and certainly the greatest extant thirteenth-century pictorial manuscript.’

An exclusive range of Mappa Mundi posters, postcards, publications and gifts can be purchased from the cathedral shop.

Digital images of the Mappa Mundi (the complete map or any part of it) are available from the cathedral shop for private study and research or for publication. The basic price for one image is £24 + VAT. Additional reproduction fees may apply in the case of images required for publication.

Published: 8th June, 2016

Updated: 20th July, 2021

Author:

Share this page
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Latest

  • Spring Garden Opening

    Spring Garden Opening

  • 'I feel sorry for the Vicar': A lecture by Clare Wichbold MBE

    'I feel sorry for the Vicar': A lecture by Clare Wichbold MBE

    A talk for Women's History Month

  • Escape Room

    Escape Room

    Can you crack the code of our Escape Room game?

  • Escape Room

    Escape Room

    Can you crack the code of our Escape Room game?

Most read

  • Mappa Mundi

    Mappa Mundi

  • Music lists

    Music lists

  • Opening times

    Opening times

  • Services

    Services

  • Chained Library

    Chained Library

  • Mappa Mundi and Chained Library exhibition

    Mappa Mundi and Chained Library exhibition

  • Pew sheets

    Pew sheets

  • Webcasts

    Webcasts

  • Who’s who

  • Livestreamed services

    Livestreamed services

Tag cloud

Cloisters Project ECP Organ Perpetual Trust
Supporting Hereford Cathedral

Supporting Hereford Cathedral

Read more

Donate Fundraise

Published: 19th March, 2015

Updated: 24th November, 2022

Author:

Latest tweet




Hereford Cathedral
5 College Cloisters
Cathedral Close
Hereford
HR1 2NG

Tel: +44 (0)1432 374200


Cathedral Shop
Newsletter signup

Contact us
Terms and conditions
Privacy policy
Cookie policy
Documentation


© Copyright 2017 Hereford Cathedral
All rights reserved

Manage Cookie Preferences