# Hereford Mappa Mundi > Richard of Haldingham and Lafford (identity disputed) - c. 1300 (dated on palaeographic and art-historical grounds to between c. 1290 and c. 1310; the oak backboard is dendrochronologically dated to trees felled around 1295-1300) > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/richard-of-haldingham-and-lafford/hereford-mappa-mundi/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-15 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Richard of Haldingham and Lafford (identity disputed) - **Date:** c. 1300 (dated on palaeographic and art-historical grounds to between c. 1290 and c. 1310; the oak backboard is dendrochronologically dated to trees felled around 1295-1300) - **Medium:** Iron gall ink, pigment (red, gold, blue and green) and gold leaf on a single sheet of vellum, mounted since the Middle Ages on an oak backboard - **Dimensions:** Approximately 158 x 133 cm per most published accounts, though the United Kingdom's 2006 UNESCO Memory of the World nomination (compiled with the owning Trust) gives 1626 mm x 1346 mm; the circular map field itself is roughly 132 cm in diameter. This record treats the small discrepancy as unresolved and cites both figures rather than silently rounding one away. - **Object type:** Map - **Period:** English, late thirteenth century - **Current location:** Hereford Cathedral, Hereford, England, in the purpose-built Mappa Mundi and Chained Library exhibition - **Attribution:** disputed ## Summary A single sheet of vellum, roughly a metre and a half across, drawn around 1300 with Jerusalem at its centre and the known world arranged around it as a visual encyclopaedia of biblical history, classical learning and Christian judgement: it is the largest medieval world map to survive complete, and it has hung at Hereford Cathedral for most of its life. Its inscribed maker, 'Richard of Haldingham and Lafford', has never been securely identified, and scholars disagree on where in the cathedral it originally hung, whether it was made at Hereford or brought from Lincoln, and whether its most famous labelling quirk - Africa and Europe's legends swapped - is an error or a deliberate device.In 1988 the Dean and Chapter proposed selling it through Sotheby's to raise a stated seven-million-pound endowment for the cathedral, triggering parliamentary debate in both Houses and a public campaign that forced the sale's withdrawal in February 1989. A rescue package assembled by the National Heritage Memorial Fund (two million pounds, conditional on a matching public appeal) and Mr J. Paul Getty (a further one million pounds) kept the map at Hereford, and the newly formed Hereford Mappa Mundi Trust took ownership on terms that removed the Chapter's power to sell it again. A purpose-built library building, opened by the Queen in 1996, has housed the map ever since.This record leaves several things openly unresolved rather than smoothing them into a clean story: the actual sum the 1989 public appeal raised, Sotheby's own valuation before the sale was withdrawn, and the identity behind the map's own six-hundred-year-old plea for prayer. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 1287-1300** Hereford Cathedral (Dean and Chapter) `[documented]` (origin and installation) Made for, or brought to, Hereford Cathedral around the time of the promotion of the cult of St Thomas de Cantilupe, whose remains were translated to an enlarged shrine in 1287. Scholars disagree on whether the map's original display position was in the north transept beside the shrine itself (Terkla, 2004) or on a wall in the south choir aisle near Cantilupe's tomb (de Wesselow, 2013); both are argued positions rather than settled fact. - **c. 1300s-1640s** Hereford Cathedral (Dean and Chapter) `[unknown]` (gap) Continuous display and custody through the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries is asserted in tertiary summaries but not documented in detail in the sources located for this record; this record flags the gap rather than inventing a continuous narrative. - **1640s-Restoration era** Hereford Cathedral (Dean and Chapter) `[unknown]` (concealment) During the English Civil War the map is reported to have been hidden beneath the floor of Bishop Audley's Chantry within the cathedral, presumably to protect it from disruption to church property during the period. This account rests solely on Wikipedia's article on the map, a tertiary source flagged for replacement with the Cathedral's own archival record. - **1855** Hereford Cathedral (Dean and Chapter) `[documented]` (conservation) Cleaned and repaired at the British Museum in 1855; small holes were subsequently patched with replacement parchment coloured to match the medieval surface. - **1939-1946** Hereford Cathedral (Dean and Chapter) `[documented]` (wartime removal) Removed from the cathedral for safekeeping during the Second World War; returned to display in 1946. Sourced here to Wikipedia's article on the map; the wider practice of evacuating British cultural treasures during the Second World War is well corroborated independently, though this specific case has not been checked against the Cathedral's own archival record. - **winter 1987-88-1988** Hereford Cathedral (Dean and Chapter) `[documented]` (loan exhibition) Displayed publicly at the Royal Academy's Age of Chivalry exhibition over the winter of 1987-88, and returned to Hereford shortly before the proposed sale became public. - **November 1988-end of February 1989** Hereford Cathedral (Dean and Chapter) `[documented]` (proposed sale) The Dean and Chapter announced their intention to sell the map at auction via Sotheby's, stating an aim of raising a seven-million-pound endowment for the cathedral's finances (against a separately reported advisers' recommendation of at least six million pounds). The plan provoked debates in both Houses of Parliament (5, 6 and 21 December 1988). No published Sotheby's valuation of the map has been located. The Dean and Chapter withdrew the map from auction at the end of February 1989, before a full rescue package was finalised, and briefly proposed an alternative scheme selling shares in a company at 1,000 pounds each with a replica for each shareholder; this scheme was not proceeded with. - **17 February 1989-1989** Hereford Mappa Mundi Trust (newly formed charity) `[documented]` (rescue package agreed) The National Heritage Memorial Fund offered two million pounds, conditional on a matching public appeal of a similar sum; Mr J. Paul Getty (later Sir Paul Getty KBE) offered a further one million pounds. Together with the anticipated public appeal this totalled approximately five million pounds against the Chapter's stated seven-million target. This record cannot confirm the final sum actually raised by the public appeal, nor whether Getty's gift came from him personally or via a charitable trust in his name; both gaps are flagged rather than filled by assumption. The Hereford Mappa Mundi Trust was created to hold permanent, non-saleable ownership of the map (and the Cathedral's Chained Library) going forward. - **1989-1996** Hereford Mappa Mundi Trust `[documented]` (new building constructed) A purpose-built library building, designed by William Whitfield, was constructed in the south-east corner of the Cathedral close to house the map and the Chained Library, opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 5 May 1996, and awarded the Royal Fine Art Commission's Building of the Year award in 1997. - **1996-present** Hereford Mappa Mundi Trust `[documented]` (current display) On permanent public display in the Mappa Mundi and Chained Library exhibition at Hereford Cathedral, in a sealed, environmentally controlled case, delegated by the Trust to the Dean and Chapter for day-to-day care and exhibition. The Trust's deed provides that ownership passes to the British Library, London, should the Trust ever be dissolved. ## Open questions - Who was 'Richard of Haldingham and Lafford', and does the map's inscription name its designer, its scribe, or its patron rather than its maker in any modern sense? - Was the map originally displayed beside St Thomas Cantilupe's shrine in the north transept (Terkla's argument) or on a wall in the south choir aisle nearer his tomb (de Wesselow's argument)? The two scholars disagree on the physical evidence. - Was the map physically produced at Lincoln, as its detailed depiction of that city long suggested, or at Hereford, as more recent backboard wood analysis indicates - and if Hereford, how should the Lincoln detail be explained? - Is the reversal of the Africa and Europe legends a deliberate optical device encoding a mirror-image reading, as Marcia Kupfer has argued, or a straightforward copying error, as earlier scholarship assumed? The disagreement is unresolved in the material located for this record. - What did the map's lost triptych wings, recorded only in John Carter's 1784 drawing, actually depict, and when and how were they lost? No other record of their content has been located. - How much did the 1989 public appeal that was meant to match the National Heritage Memorial Fund's two million pounds actually raise? The figure has not been found in the sources consulted for this record. - What valuation, if any, did Sotheby's place on the map before the 1988 sale was announced and then withdrawn in February 1989? No published estimate has been located. ## Sources - [1] Hansard, House of Commons, 'Mappa Mundi', 5 December 1988. - [2] Hansard, House of Lords, 'The Mappa Mundi', 6 December 1988. - [3] Hansard, House of Lords, 'Historic Buildings and Treasures', 21 December 1988. - [4] Hansard, House of Commons, 'Mappa Mundi', 20 March 1989. - [5] The Burlington Magazine, 'Sic transit mappa mundi?' (contemporary account of the 1988-89 sale crisis). - [6] United Kingdom Permanent Delegation to UNESCO, nomination of the Hereford Mappa Mundi to the Memory of the World Register, Ref N 2006-32, 31 March 2006 (compiled with the owning Trust and the Cathedral custodian). - [7] P.D.A. Harvey and Scott D. Westrem, Mappa Mundi: The Hereford World Map (Hereford Cathedral / British Library, 1996) - standard reference for the map's origins and sources; bibliographic details confirmed via library catalogue and publisher records, not a first-hand reading of the book. - [8] Scott D. Westrem, The Hereford Map: A Transcription and Translation of the Legends with Commentary, Terrarum Orbis 1 (Brepols, 2001) - standard reference for the map's texts; bibliographic details confirmed via publisher and journal review records, not a first-hand reading of the book. - [9] Dan Terkla, 'The Original Placement of the Hereford Mappa Mundi', Imago Mundi 56.2 (2004) - argued position on original display location; accessed via secondary search-engine summary, not the full published article. Flagged for verification against the original. - [10] Thomas de Wesselow, 'Locating the Hereford Mappamundi', Imago Mundi 65.2 (2013) - counter-argument on original display location; accessed via secondary search-engine summary, not the full published article. Flagged for verification against the original. - [11] Marcia Kupfer, Art and Optics in the Hereford Map: An English Mappa Mundi, c. 1300 (Yale University Press, 2016) - argument that the Africa/Europe legend swap is a deliberate mirror-image device; accessed via secondary search-engine summary of a published review (the review itself, at CAA Reviews, returned an access error on direct fetch). Flagged for verification against the book itself. - [12] Factum Foundation, 'The Hereford Mappa Mundi' (digitisation project page, covering the 2013 and 2016-2018 Factum Arte scanning campaigns). - [13] The Hereford Mappa Mundi Trust, 'About the Trust'. - [14] Wikipedia, 'Hereford Mappa Mundi'. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with the Cathedral's own archival and conservation records and with the Harvey/Westrem volumes directly. - [15] Wikipedia, 'National Heritage Memorial Fund'. Tertiary source, consulted for general NHMF context only. - [16] Wikipedia, 'John Paul Getty Jr.'. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with a dedicated biography or the Getty charitable trust's own published records regarding the precise vehicle and date of the Hereford gift. - [17] Daniel Crouch Rare Books, 'The Hereford Mappa Mundi' (dealer reference page, dimensions and general description). - [18] Wikimedia Commons, file description page, File:Hereford-Karte.jpg. - [19] Wikimedia Commons, file description page, File:Hereford mappa mundi 14th cent repro IMG 3895.JPG (uploader's own description identifies the subject as a 'Replica'). - [20] Wikimedia Commons, file description page, File:Hereford Mappa Mundi 1300.jpg. - [21] Wikimedia Commons, file description page, File:Triptych containing the Hereford Mappa Mundi.png (John Carter, 1784, British Library Add. MS 29942, fol. 148r). - [22] Wikimedia Commons, file description page, File:Hereford map facsimile by Havergal 1872.jpg. - [23] UK Retail Prices Index (RPI) historical series, used as the method for the period-value conversion in this record's account of the 1988-89 figures. - [24] Just History Posts, 'Historical Objects: The Hereford Mappa Mundi'. Tertiary blog source, consulted for general narrative confirmation only and not relied on for any figure not independently sourced elsewhere. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.