This year’s Aspects Festival which takes place from 14–24 September featured a host of events which interested lovers of history.

The Society for the first time sponsored an event at the annual Aspects literary festival . A very pleasing audience of 80 in Studio 1A – the former Good Templar Hall, home for 30 years of our society - heard Dr Diarmuid Scully give a most stimulating illustrated lecture on Bangor’s place on the world map of 1300 in Hereford cathedral.

The main theme of Dr Scully’s argument was that the map makers were anxious to show the civilised nature of Bangor - Civitas Bencur – despite its being on the edge of the known world, because they were strongly influenced by St Bernard of Clairvaux, a friend of Saint Malachy of Bangor , who built the first stone church and generally revived the 6th century Abbey.