Category: Data stories

• Who gets a blue plaque?

  

  I read all 1,037 English Heritage plaques listed in London and mapped 6,476 plaques across the UK. Only 16% of the people on London’s plaques are women, but 54% of those honoured since 2020.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories

  data, maps, London, blue plaques, English Heritage, public history, women’s history, commemoration

• Rotten Boroughs: Where Are They Now?

  

  Before 1832 Gatton had 7 voters and two MPs while Manchester had none. I mapped all 56 boroughs the Reform Act abolished: today 25 are villages, a hamlet or an empty hill.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories

  Census 2021, Cornwall, data visualisation, elections, history, maps, Reform Act 1832, rotten boroughs

• Minted: were England’s mint towns still the big towns?

  

  Around the year 1000, every English penny named the town that struck it. I followed the 68 mint towns of Æthelred II forward to 1377, 1801 and 2021. 8 of the 10 biggest were still among England’s largest towns in 1377; Lydford, Cadbury and Torksey are villages now.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories

  data, maps, Anglo-Saxon, coins, mints, medieval towns, Domesday, census

• Canal Mania: Did the Canal Towns Boom, and Do They Still Lead?

  

  England’s canal towns grew about 4.0 times over between 1801 and 1861. But they were rising before the canals came, and today they are bigger, not richer.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories

  canals, Census 2021, data visualisation, history, Industrial Revolution, Lancashire, maps, open data

• Here be dragons: do Britain’s dragons live by the church?

  

  I put 26 named dragon legends and 135 Dragon, Drake, Worm and Serpent place names on the map. The legends cling to the parish church (77% within 1 km, against 55% of comparable places); barrows, hillforts and rivers barely matter.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories

  barrows, British history, churches, data visualisation, dragons, folklore, maps, place names