BOB TV: The Nantwich Fire (Box Office Bears #2)

4 August, 2021

In: BOB TV, History, Wrestling and Combat

Tagged: 1584, Animals, animation, Bearbaiting, Bears, BOBTV, Combat, Dogs, early modern, Fire, Historical, Nantwich, Wrestling

Our new film launches the Box Office Bears website, a research project studying bears in Tudor and Stuart England.

This animation takes us back to 1583, when a fire spread through Nantwich (in north-west England) and set free certain residents of the aptly-named The Bear Inn. We introduce you to an overlooked aspect of Renaissance England via a cartoon inspired entirely by real-life events from the historical archives.

This is the first of a series of Box Office Bears animations. Box Office Bears is an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project, which brings together archaeology, archives, and performance to explore the history of animal sport in early modern England.

For more on these ideas, see:

Box Office Bears