The Material Culture of Wills Project

This channel contains videos created by the Leverhulme Trust project 'The Material Culture of Wills, England 1540-1790'. We’re a team of historians and data scientists from the University of Exeter and The National Archives using wills to explore the importance and meanings of material culture in sixteenth-, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England.

Our project uses cutting edge digital technology to automatically generate 25,000 transcriptions of manuscript wills and we are working collaboratively with a community of volunteers on the Zooniverse platform to check and correct these transcriptions. We will be creating videos that explain more about the project, provide an introduction to Zooniverse, and answer some of the questions we are frequently asked by our volunteers. 

Join in! To enter the wonderful world of wills and to work with us to open up this manuscript collection visit our Zooniverse site via the link below.