recent posts
Welcome to the Medieval Jewish Lincoln Walking Tour!
A new walking tour, designed by Natasha Jenman and Dean A. Irwin, has been created to explore the Jewish history of Medieval Lincoln. Generously funded by the Jewish Historical Society of England, this will be a permanent walking tour within the city, with a printed map available for those who wish to undertake the tour in a self-guided fashion. Additionally, Natasha and Dean are always happy to travel to Lincoln to guide groups through the city’s Jewish history!
Between c.1150-1290, the town was home to a sizeable community, eminent scholars and several prosperous individuals, and the lives they led are still visible in the surviving medieval street plan of Lincoln. The route of the tour leads through hotspots of activity: the markets, the community chest, the places where children played, designed to illustrate the rich tapestry of Jewish life woven into the streets of Lincoln.
Extensive archival work has traced property ownership to known individuals, spotlighting the Jewish women and men who once owned these sites, and revealing glimpses of the actual people who made up the community. The periods of life, interrupted, are also navigated, and are unavoidable in any Jewish history of Lincoln. The tour situates the anti-Jewish aggression in the context of national events, and how these events played out in the real, local sense at Lincoln. In the thirteenth century, a ritual murder accusation would have devastating consequences for the Jewish community: the case of ‘Little Hugh’. Importantly, this tour seeks to reorient this heritage away from how this narrative was imagined and used by antisemitic commentators, instead, shaping this discussion around the real individuals caught up in this tragedy, amidst the sites it took place. This aspect of Lincoln’s history could easily dominate the tour, but instead one should get a sense of the good, the bad and the ugly of life in this medieval town. Walking the physical remnants of Lincoln’s history is a reminder that for two centuries, the people of Lincoln (Jews and Christians) lived alongside each other.
This tour is dedicated to the memory late Dr. Robin Mundill, whose impact on the field of medieval Anglo-Jewish history is immeasurable, and in whose memory these efforts are made to engage with and spread public awareness.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of our partners for the walking tour: the University of Lincoln’s Medieval and Early Modern Studies Group, and the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.
Photo of Natasha and Dean leading the inaugural walking tour – to finalise the route of the walking tour on 11 July 2025 (Copyright: Howard Morris, chair of the Jewish Square Mile Project).
