Keynote Speaker: Professor John Chartres, University of Leeds

This one-day conference explores topics including:

• bodies of water, waterways, & water-related transport (canals, rivers, lakes, seas, streams, barges, boats, ships, ferries, steamboats and trains, lightships)

• communities living & working on or near water (sailors and the navy, bargemen/boat people, fishermen/fishwives, whalers, ports, harbours, seaside towns and tourism, coastal communities, Lake Districts and Fenland communities).

• water in various forms (steam, mist, fog, liquid, ice, frost, snow) and science and medicine dealing with water/water-borne diseases (cholera, biology of water creatures fish, birds, bugs, etc, aquaria, flushing toilets)

• the politics of water (sanitary reform, the provision of clean drinking water, reservoirs and sewers, wells, ponds, privies, public baths, laundry industry, the ‘great unwashed’)

• water mythology and creatures and their cultural representations (the Kraken, Moby Dick, mermaids, naiads, the Lady of the Lake, the Lady of Shallot, Neptune)

• artistic and literary representations of water and water-related architecture (seascapes, maritime novels, travel literature relating to the sea/arctic, angling stories, harbours, piers, bridges, lighthouses)

• religious and spiritual uses of water (living water, baptism, truth in a well, the temperance movement) and material forms of water (watery foods e.g. soups, ice-cream)

The programme for the NNCN conference on Water is now available for download here: Water Programme

For further information see: https://nc19n.wordpress.com/nncn-blog/