Holy Trinity Priory

At the top of Micklegate in York, just inside Micklegate Bar stood Holy Trinity Priory, a seven acre site housing the church, monastic and service buildings of a house of Benedictine monks. All that remains today is part of the nave of the priory church, saved from destruction because it served as the parish church for the neighborhood and continues in use as such to this day.

What stands today comprises barely a third of the original church and none of the monastery's other buildings remain. However, enough about the medieval priory is known to attempt visualizing what it may have looked like, which is what Christianity & Culture and Heritage Technology did in 2010. The resulting touchscreen installed in the church invites visitors to explore the buildings and grounds of the priory as they may have appeared around 1450.

Holy Trinity Priory, York, west elevation as it may have been c1450. (Copyright Heritage Technology Ltd. and Christianity and Culture, all rights reserved)

I drew the architectural plans (and wrote some text along with Louise Hampson at CnC) for our reconstruction of the site based on archaeological and art historical research (including a GPR survey I carried out to locate the cloister. Alas, like most of my geophysical work, the results showed very little!). Geoff Arnott at HTec turned my drawings into glorious 3d and Pat Gibbs at CnC stitched it all together into a lovely, intuitive interface. It was a tremendous amount of work (especially from Geoff) but well worth it.

Geoff Arnott's stunning modelling and rendering of the church and cloisters of Holy Trinity Priory, York c1450. (Copyright Heritage Technlogy Ltd. and Christianity & Culture, all rights reserved)

That was Phase I.

Now it's time for Phase II. This time, we're working on select building interiors and, ambitiously, Geoff has tackled character animation so we can present life at the priory on the Feast of the Holy Trinity c1450. Actually, we've been working on it for a little while and with my drawings well in hand.

However, even more exciting is Geoff's grand vision for these interior scenes.  For the first time, we are including character animation to populate our interiors.  Geoff has been working hard in this area for some time but he's really pushing the boat out for this phase.  It's going to be fantastic.

This series will update as we move forward with the work. Standby.