{"id":2328,"date":"2023-11-22T15:02:18","date_gmt":"2023-11-22T15:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/bodies-emotions-material-culture\/?p=2328"},"modified":"2023-11-27T15:41:18","modified_gmt":"2023-11-27T15:41:18","slug":"2328","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/bodies-emotions-material-culture\/2023\/11\/22\/2328\/","title":{"rendered":"Astley Hall Virtual Tour"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The author of this blog entry is Dr Abigail Greenall, Early Career Research Fellow at The John Rylands Research Institute, University of Manchester.<\/em><\/p>\n

For some years now, Sasha Handley<\/a> and I have shared a fairly healthy obsession with apotropaic, or evil averting, burn marks. That is to say, we have scoured historic houses in the north west for flame-shaped marks on timber-framework and oak furniture. Largely made in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, these curious marks have been found in houses and barns across northern Europe and North America, and were either intended to convey good luck or designed to protect families from disease, fire, storms, and supernatural forces through sympathetic or ritual magic.1<\/sup> Either way, they probably comforted and assured the people who made them.<\/p>\n

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Fig. 1. Burn marks on the headboard of the bed in the Stucco Bedroom at Astley Hall. Photo credit: Abigail Greenall.\u00a0<\/em><\/div>\n
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Fig. 2. Burn mark on the oak panelling in the Oak Bedroom at Astley Hall. Photo credit: Abigail Greenall.<\/em><\/p>\n

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In 2019, we received a tip-off that some burn marks had been found on the early modern beds at Astley Hall, Chorley. Given our mutual interest in supernatural beliefs, and Sasha\u2019s particular interest in sleep related practices<\/a>, we made a trip to Astley Hall. As it turns out, the Education & Engagement team at Astley Hall had already noticed public interest in its historic graffiti and burn marks but they had not been systematically surveyed and analysed.<\/p>\n

We decided to work together on a project to better understand the marks at Astley. I secured funding from the North West Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership for a twelve-month internship the following year. September 2020 was an exciting time for Astley Hall. Chorley Council (who own the Tudor\/Jacobean house) had announced plans to carry out a \u00a31.1 million restoration project<\/a>, and the curators were set to rejuvenate the Hall\u2019s historic interpretation. My role was to help Mitch Robinson (Education & Engagement) and Amy Dearnaley (Curator) uncover and exhibit Astley\u2019s historic graffiti.<\/p>\n

I led an archaeological survey of the entire house (spanning three floors) and its collection of early modern furniture to uncover and record burn marks. 121 newly discovered burn marks were measured and recorded over a three-month period. Reports of this data were drawn up and are now stored at Astley Hall for future researchers.<\/p>\n

Presenting this data to Astley\u2019s visitors in an accessible and captivating way was no mean feat. Burn marks are notoriously tricky to explain. Though there is plenty of archaeological evidence to suggest that diverse groups of people repeatedly marked their homes and furnishings in this way, they don\u2019t appear to have written anything about them. Explaining this ritual practice thus requires an approach and theoretical framework that is sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of different people in specific historic contexts. Such conceptual unpacking is a lengthy and wordy process. There was only space for a brief introduction to them on the new interpretation panels that Amy was in the process of writing. We needed to find another way to show the public how burn marks were made and contextualise them within the social, emotional, and religious practices of the early modern period.<\/p>\n

Our solution was to use a digital humanities approach\u2014an idea that came to me during the fifth masterclass of Microscopic Records<\/em><\/a>, a British Academy event that took place at the University of Manchester in October 2020 and convened by Stefan Han\u00df<\/a>. In this masterclass Luca Scholz<\/a> gave a practical demonstration on how to generate 3D models from photographs of artefacts, buildings, and people in the photogrammetry software Agisoft Metashape. I came away from the event excited by the potential role that 3D modelling could play in capturing and conveying the extra interpretative information we needed at Astley Hall.<\/p>\n

After making a few enquiries, I met with Kostas Arvanitis<\/a>, who founded Virtual Tours: Powered by Matterport<\/a> during COVID-19. This project allows university students, staff, and the wider public to access museums, galleries, and heritage sites in Greater Manchester from wherever they are in the world. Kostas agreed to include Astley Hall in the Virtual Tours project. I pitched the idea to Dave Tetlow, Astley\u2019s Heritage Manager, who was keen to get involved.<\/p>\n

Astley Hall was one of the first heritage sites in the Virtual Tours project. It was also the largest space the team had taken on. John Piprani<\/a>, who manages the technical side of the Virtual Tours project, had the brilliant idea to run the Astley Hall by Virtual Tours collaboration as a training session for Archaeology students interested in heritage.<\/p>\n

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Fig. 3. John Piprani and Stephanie Rylance with\u00a0Matterport technology at Astley Hall. Photo credit: Abigail Greenall.\u00a0<\/em><\/div>\n
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Fig. 4. John Piprani, Laura Thompson and Rebecca Oldfield adjusting the height of the Matterport camera at Astley Hall. Photo credit: Abigail Greenall.\u00a0<\/em><\/div>\n

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In May 2022, John and an enthusiastic group of assistants\u2014Laura Thompson, Rebecca Oldfield, and Stephanie Rylance\u2014made the trip out to Astley Hall with the Matterport camera in tow. With this impressive (if slightly intimidating) piece of kit we took over 400 360\u00b0 photos, known as scans, of all publicly accessible rooms, and experimented with light and height to recreate the experience of being in the space. We captured the whole house in just two days, thanks to this wonderful group of researchers.<\/p>\n

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Fig. 5. Alternative view of the drawing room lit by candlelight to recreate the experience of being in the space at nighttime. Still image\u00a0of 3D model.\u00a0<\/em><\/div>\n

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Fig. 6. Scan taken at the height of someone sitting down, playing the piano in the drawing room. Still image of 3D model.\u00a0<\/em><\/div>\n

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Generating the 3D model of the Hall was easy, even if we did encounter one or two glitches in the process! Matterport technology cleverly stitches together each scan to create a space that you can move through virtually, toggle between floors, and view or measure floor plans. The team\u2019s hard work, reflected in the large number of scans, paid off \u2013 the Matterport app produced a good quality 3D model<\/a>.<\/p>\n