Back in 2023, library staff from Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Conservation & Heritage, Cultural Heritage Imaging Laboratory, and Collections and Academic Liaison was awarded funding from Cambridge Digital Humanities. Our aim was to carry out a project of conservation, digitisation and analysis of a fragment from a manuscript of the medieval French story of Merlin the magician which had been re-discovered at Cambridge University Library.

The fragment was preserved as the binding of a 16th century archival manuscript, a register of property of Huntingfield Manor in Suffolk (GBR/0012/MS Vanneck Box 5-5a).

We decided not to remove the fragment from the archival document but to preserve it in situ as an original example of early modern English archival binding. This implied using cutting-edge techniques (Multispectral Imaging and X-ray examination by computed tomography, or CT-Scan) as well as ingenious virtual manipulations to make possible the digitisation and access to hidden textual parts, and to reveal the structure of the binding.

We are delighted that many of our images, 3D models, and animations of the fragment (a piece of the Old French Suite Vulgate du Merlin) have now been published on Cambridge Digital Library!

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You can now register to attend our talk on Wednesday 26 March, 5-6pm (Divinity Faculty, Runcie room) as part of the 2025 Cambridge Festival! We will show how advanced digitisation techniques allowed the virtual unfolding of the fragment (whose handling is particularly delicate) and increased the readability of the text, proving essential to the production of its forthcoming edition.

Irene Fabry-Tehranchi