Reading Old Handwriting Challenge

What is Palaeography?

Palaeography is the study of old handwriting. This means studying the shapes of letters, the shortening of words, and other features to understand how writing styles changed over time and to establish the origin and age of the documents.

Why is it important?

Studying palaeography helps historians, archivists, and researchers to understand and date documents from the past. 

What is an ‘Archivist’?

An archivist is someone who collects and preserves old documents. A collection of old documents and other records is called an ‘archive’.

Palaeography and the Assheton Collection

Study of the Assheton family archives helps us to learn about the lives of this family from a long time ago.

The collection contains some very interesting items including the earliest surviving written document. It is from 1197 and is the ‘Articles of Agreement’. This document tells us how the Assheton family land was divided between Roger de Middleton and William de Radcliffe.

 
Challenge

Let’s look at a document from the Assheton collection. It was written in 1607!

It is called an ‘Indenture’ and it was signed by Sir Richard Assheton, Knight, High Sheriff of Lancaster and the Justices of the Peace for the County and a man called Sir John Savage, Knight, Mayor of Chester. The document is the receipt for 100 armed men. The men were gathered together by Sir Richard Assheton for transport to Ireland. The soldiers and their weapons have been named in this document. You can see what the full document looks like here.

Below are five names from this document. Can you try to read these names? Write what you think the name is in the box below.

If you need help with the letters have a look at our resources page found here. Or try this page here.