Tag: folklore

Bridging the gap between the academic and non-academic worlds: Engaging the public in academic research

In this blog Reiss Sims, who has just gained a first-class degree in History at Portsmouth (well done, Reiss!), discusses a project he worked on last year with some of his fellow History students for the module ‘Working with the Past’, coordinated by Dr Mike Esbester. As part of their project, the students looked into how academic historians take their work ‘out of the academy’ and into the public realm. Reiss and his fellow students interviewed our Dr Karl Bell, who researches all things supernatural, to find out how he has tried to engage the wider public in the history he studies.

Last year, as part of our assessment for the second-year module ‘Working with the Past’, I and some of my fellow students interviewed tutors in the History team to find out how important they thought it was for academic historians to engage with the wider public. In this blog we reflect on our discussion with Dr Karl Bell – Reader in History at the University of Portsmouth. Karl was happy to take a step back from his busy schedule of all things supernatural, to give us an insight into what history he studies, why and how public engagement is valuable, and why the walls between academic and public history should be broken down.

The role of the historian has often been a topic of high debate. Traditionally, it was an occupation designed for the academic elite, serving to tell the stories of the extraordinary and powerful. Then, due to a rise in cultural and social scholarship during the mid-twentieth century, the historian’s role shifted towards becoming a more public-facing figure; bridging the gap between the academic and non-academic worlds by exploring the ‘ordinary’ and ‘normal’. As a result, concern as to whether historians should, or should not, engage with wider society still penetrates historical discussion – should history be read by the many, or by the few? Are all academics public intellectuals, or private? What is the use of history for non-historians? These are just some of the questions that intellectuals, such as Edward Said, have tried to answer, suggesting “there is no such thing as a private intellectual, since the moment you set down words and then publish them you have entered the public world”.[1] Nevertheless, our interview with Karl highlighted some of the ways in which he understands the relationship between history, the historian, and the public.

The public-facing historian is a philosophy that is echoed by Karl, whose research primarily focuses on supernatural beliefs, magical practices, folklore, and urban legends of the late eighteenth and early twentieth century. When asked what attracted him to his specific field of history, Karl suggested that he is “attracted to areas of our historical cultures and experiences that have tended to be overlooked or underappreciated”, and that by studying such areas, society can develop an enhanced understanding of how people lived in the past.[2] In addition, Karl believed that the academic and public spheres share differing perceptions of what history is, with much of the public perception focusing on “momentous historical events – political and military history.”[3] All of this counts towards the suggestion that interaction with the public can be achieved by varying the histories we choose to tell. For example, by studying the supernatural, Karl aims to provide the public with a “personal way of connecting back to similar such beliefs of the past” and thus making it more relatable, whilst also broadening their understanding of the possibilities of historical study.[4]

Whilst public lectures, seminars, and events are quite frequently used by historians to engage with the public in an intimate environment, television and radio can be quite the step up, allowing the historian to reach a national, and sometimes global, audience. In 2020, Karl made an appearance on Channel 4’s British history show Britain’s Most Historic Towns, discussing the role of Portsmouth and the Royal Dockyard during the Napoleonic Wars. Karl’s task was to take the complex subject of nineteenth-century Europe, without a script or time to go into immense detail, in order to make the show’s topic easily accessible to a wider audience. It is plausible to assume that the audience of the show could very well be made up of people with, and without, historical interest, making Karl’s job even more significant.

In his work, British historian Donald Watt has reaffirmed some of the points made by Karl, regarding the relationship between the historian and television. In an article titled, History on the Public Screen, Watt indicated that whilst the reception of history by the public may largely be the same, the historian’s style of working must adapt. Unlike in seminars, lectures, or webinars, television is ultimately concerned with entertainment, not total accuracy, and so the historian must attempt to make themselves, and their topic, clear and digestible.[5] In doing so, they are able to prevent distortion or misrepresentation of a particular topic. If kept in mind, Karl and many other historians have the ability to tackle the ‘classroom’ perception of “history”, by bringing it to life, and in doing so, has the power to encourage nationwide appeal.

The work of a historian, no matter the medium in which it is recorded, can have a substantial impact on society for decades. Be it a new school of thought, a unique interpretation of an historical topic, or work in Hollywood, the historical legacy left behind can be extremely powerful. When asked about what legacy he would like to leave with the public, Karl indicated that he wanted to continue spreading the message that history is not “owned” by historians, and that it is not a topic that is constrained to the limitations of the school curriculum. It is clear then, that Karl’s objective as a historian is not just successful research, but to encourage the wider public to explore and engage with history more freely. Hopefully, in doing so, a new generation of historians will emerge.

Notes

[1] Maurice St. Pierre, “Eric Williams: The historian as public intellectual,” Journal of Labor and Society 23, no. 1 (March 2020): 71.

[2] Karl Bell, “Working with the Past Interview,” interview by Reiss Sims, Daniel Squire, Sophie Sinclair, and Joshua Wintle, March 21, 2021, 1

[3] Bell, interview.

[4] Bell, interview.

[5] Donald Watt, “History on the public screen I,” In The Historian and Film, ed. Paul Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011) 169.

July 12, 2022
From folk tale to cheap consumer good to object of wonder – the life history of a toby jug

Our new UoP history module, The Extraordinary and the Everyday: People, Places and Possessions, taught by Dr Katy Gibbons and Dr Maria Cannon, studies material evidence – objects, buildings, landcapes – as a starting point for asking questions about the past. It employs an innovative form of assessment – the object biography, which recognises that material artefacts, just like people, accumulate histories and have their own life-stories to tell, about the meanings and values of the societies that produced, collected or consumed them. Harry Odgers’ object biography told the complex story of a seemingly simple drinking vessel, a ‘Toby jug’.

Objects of the past are incredibly useful and can offer the historical narrative unique information and emotion concerning people’s lives. Items are ‘the stuff of life’; because they have frequently interacted with individuals in cultural and social ways.[1] This biography provides insight into a ‘Toby Jug’ by exploring its significant contextual features; its reflection of the early modern consumer market and its growth; and its numerous lives.

British Museum, Registration number 1887,0307,H.78 © The Trustees of the British Museum

The jug depicts a seated man clutching a mug of alcohol. It is made out of an earthenware material with a colourless lead glaze; and painted yellow and purple. This, along with its distinctive tri-cornered hat, makes it a Toby Jug – a popular object in early modern Britain amongst consumers; and its primary function was to store and serve alcohol. It currently resides in The British Museum, who state that it was created ‘circa 1780’ in Staffordshire.[2]

The precise origins of this fairly fictious character are somewhat unknown. The jug of alcohol, tobacco pipe resting at his side and name ‘Toby’ all associate it with the tavern, specifically referencing tales of an eighteenth-century Yorkshireman, with similar features, who supposedly drank two-thousand gallons of ale from a jug. Elizabeth Wallace acknowledges that the character took influence from a ‘Yorkshire drinker’ named ‘Toby Filpot’; it was spread and ‘memorialized’ by the poet Francis Fawkes, whose tale, The Brown Jug, refers to a similar drunkard.[3] Living in Yorkshire, Fawkes was situated where the jugs first became popular, implying his poem potentially incorporated this character into northern folk-life.[4] Folk tales are often fictitious, yet Dee Ashliman explains that many people have ‘accepted’ folktales to be true.[5] Likewise, Vladimir Propp explains further that either way folk law can simply reflect ‘the outlook of the age’.[6] It suggests that tales were a common way of successfully spreading knowledge of, potentially even marketing, consumer goods during this period. Word of mouth was the ‘simplest form of communication’ because it did not require any form of education to utilise, unlike writing letters or reading newspapers. Therefore, it provides insight into how folk tales, and their materialistic counterparts, were a popular form of early modern culture; and also, that objects were a focal point of conversation between people and communities – aiding the social historical narrative within early modern society.[7]

Etching, 1786, with verses below: ‘this brown Jug that now foams with mild Ale … Was once Toby Fillpot, a thirsty old Soul’, the jug being supposedly created by the potter out of the clay of Toby after he had been long-buried. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_2010-7081-1369

Alternatively, it reflects the growing consumer market during this period, in which people sought items of both decorativeness and functionality, strengthened by steam power advancements and the introduction of materials like earthenware, which were ‘so much cheaper’.[8] Cheaper earthenware’s encouraged a ‘great spread of spending on manufactures’ because businesses had spare money to reinvest.[9] Correspondingly, people in this period were more ‘conscious of their material life’, meaning mass production was becoming necessary to match the higher demand for materialistic products.[10] Inevitably this led to a period where production expanded at a higher and constant frequency across the country.[11] Bevis Hillier explains that folk pottery is unique, and popular, because it is both ‘ruthlessly decorative as it is ruthlessly functional’.[12] Clearly this Toby Jug is a part of this growing consumer market: it functioned as an alcohol jug and was decorated in a purple and yellow colouring, mirroring the growing desire from consumers. Additionally, this Toby Jug was created from earthenware and its cheap, brittle form can be reflected by the minor damages to its lid. Staffordshire potters, including Ralph Wood, utilised similar materials in their other work; which are similarly ‘earthenware’ and ‘lead glazed’.[13] Wallace argues that this jug was ‘made at the factory of Ralph Wood’ – suggesting it was indeed his work. It is a valuable asset because it offers insight into its creator; whilst providing a unique perspective into the growth of the consumer market, including the cultural desire of consumers, emerging in the English Industrial period.[14]

The ‘transition to capitalism’ during this period – demanding objects of luxury and functionality – only saw the market grow further. For example, it included other folk legends including Gin Woman and Drunken Sal; which functioned correspondingly, whilst aiding the market by offering consumers choice.[15] They were revised in the twentieth century where anything could appear on the jug – including Charlie Chaplin or Pavarotti.[16] Its impact is reflected by this growth into later centuries; where artists such as Richard Slee have even created modern adaptations like Toby as Abstraction, which plays on the idea of ‘Englishness’ and the meaning of English traditions. [17] It shows the impact these jugs had within the consumer market, which grew over the recent centuries, and the extent they ‘circulated as a popular consumer item’ – as they remained popular for consumers, even today.[18] This usefully enforces how items incorporating both functionality and decorativeness, which are prominent within modern consumerist culture, stemmed from the early modern period.

Staffordshire Toby Jug of King George V, 1918, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

Luckily this jug was able to survive numerous lives. Once created, it would have been used in a tavern to store alcohol. Use in an alcohol establishment, surrounded by people who were intoxicated, could indicate how the lid was damaged.[19] Also, it implies that there was a shared usage of this item. The jug would have been utilised in a public house by numerous people, suggesting that these establishments favoured items of decorative and functionality as well. It was later acquired by museum administrator Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks, and then donated to the British Museum in 1887.[20] Catherine Richardson states that object’s function as a ‘consumer good’ in their primary lives, whilst later becoming objects of ‘collecting and wonder’.[21] Whilst Anne Gerittsen explains further that it is through these numerous ‘social lives’ that objects acquire their meaning.[22] Similarly, Samuel Adshead explains that when objects are ‘processed’ through these social interactions, and therefore given meaning, they become ‘cultural objects’ of materialistic culture; because their interactions with various people, and within different places, provides them with unique and diverse backgrounds, as well as an emotional perspective – which written culture can often lack due to its less visually engaging form.[23] This object is useful by providing ‘complex, symbolic bundles of social, cultural, and individual meaning’ through its cultural complexities regarding its origins; its placement in a wider, growing consumer market; and its social lives over the past three centuries.[24]

Clearly this object has had a rich and diverse history. It passed through multiple life stages – from its primary use as a jug through to its life in a museum. The jug is a useful instrument when investigating the historical narrative: its features and materials reflect the pottery industry amongst the wider, developing consumer market in the eighteenth century, whilst its lives offer valuable, emotional perspectives into past relationships and human interactions. It is an item which provides a unique angle on the cultural and social relationships within the early modern period.

[1] Anthony Buxton, Tim Harris, Stephen Taylor, and Andy Wood. Domestic Culture in Early Modern England (Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2015), 95

[2] The British Museum Collection Online. “Toby Jug.” https://research.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?assetId=415927001&objectId=38180&partId=1, last accessed 2 April 2020.

[3] Elizabth Kowaleski Wallace. “Character Resolved into Clay – The Toby Jug, Eighteenth-Century English Ceramics, and the Rise of Consumer Culture,” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 31, No. 1 (2018): 19-22; Francis Fawkes. The Brown Jug (1761).

[4] West Yorkshire Archive Service. “Lister Family of Shibden Hall, Family and Estate Records.” https://www.catalogue.wyjs.org.uk/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=CC00001, last accessed 2 April 2020

[5] Dee Ashliman, Folk and Fairy Tales: A Handbook (London: Greenwood Press, 2004), 34

[6] Vladimir Propp, Ariadna Y. Martin, and Richard P. Martin. Theory and History of Folklore (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 3.

[7] John Miller. Early Modern Britain, 1450-1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 420.

[8] Darren Dean, Andrew Hann, Mark Overton and Jane Whittle, Production and Consumption in English Households, 1600-1750 (London: Routledge, 2004), 104.

[9] Pat Hudson. The Industrial Revolution (London: Edward Arnold, 1992), 175.

[10] Lorna Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in Britain, 1660-1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), xix.

[11] Peter Mathias. The First Industrial Nation: The Economic History of Britain 1700-1914 (London: Routledge, 1988), 2.

[12] Bevis Hillier. Pottery and Porcelain 1700-1914: The Social History of the Decorative Arts (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968), 117

[13] The British Museum Collection Online. “Figure of Lioness.” https://research.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=73277&page=3322&partId=1&searchText=europe, last accessed 1 April 2020.

[14] Elizabth Kowaleski Wallace, “Character Resolved into Clay – The Toby Jug, Eighteenth-Century English Ceramics, and the Rise of Consumer Culture,” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 31, No. 1 (2018): 40

[15] Darren Dean, Andrew Hann, Mark Overton and Jane Whittle. Production and Consumption in English Households, 1600-1750 (London: Routledge, 2004), 2.

[16] Victoria and Albert Museum Archives. “Charlie Chaplin.” http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O120675/charlie-chaplin-jug-unknown/, last accessed 11 March 2020.

[16] Victoria and Albert Museum Archives. “Pavarotti.” http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1289377/pavarotti-jug-tootle-douglas/, last accessed 2 April 2020.

[17] Garth Clark and Cathy Courtney. Richard Slee (Aldershot: Lund Humphries, 2003) pp. 100-101; https://www.artfund.org/supporting-museums/art-weve-helped-buy/artwork/9353/toby-as-abstraction.

[18] Elizabth Kowaleski Wallace. “Character Resolved into Clay – The Toby Jug, Eighteenth-Century English Ceramics, and the Rise of Consumer Culture” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 31, No. 1 (2018): 19-22

[19] The British Museum, “Toby Jug.” https://research.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?assetId=415927001&objectId=38180&partId=1, 2 April 2020.

[20] The British Museum, “Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks.” https://research.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/term_details.aspx?bioId=148562, last accessed 2 April 2020.

[21] Catherine Richardson, Tara Hamling and David Gaimster. The Routledge Handbook of Material Culture in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 2016), 6

[22] Anne Gerritsen. Giorgio. Riello, The Global Lives of Things: The Material Culture of Connections in the Early Modern World (London: Routledge, 2015), 2

[23] Samuel A. M. Adshead. Material Culture in Europe and China, 1400 – 1800: The Rise of Consumerism (London: Macmillan Press, 1997), 2-3

[24] Ann Smart Martin. “Winterthur Portfolio”, A Journal of American Material Culture 28, No. 2 (1993): 141-157.

July 9, 2020
Building Supernatural Cities

In this post, Karl Bell, reader in cultural and social history, talks about his new book Supernatural Cities: Enchantment, Anxiety and Spectrality, bringing together scholars from across the globe working on the relationship between supernatural beliefs and urban cultures. He describes what the book is about, and what he learned from the process of international academic collaboration.

In my most recent book I brought together and led an international group of scholars in an exploration of magic, monsters, ghosts and storytelling in urban cultures around the world. Examining these ideas from the late eighteenth to the early twenty-first century, Supernatural Cities: Enchantment, Anxiety and Spectrality (Boydell and Brewer, 2019) challenges the assumption that supernatural beliefs and magical practices died out under the impact of modern urbanisation. Engaging with urban supernatural cultures across five continents, the contributors demonstrate how such ideas played a role in evolving urban cultures, and how they continue to serve a cultural function up to the present day. Underlying the broad historical and geographical scope of the book is the argument that the supernatural has continually been adapted and updated to accommodate and express our cultural, economic and environmental fears.

Heart Amulet from the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford

The book takes its title from my faculty-funded research project (www.supernaturalcities.com), and originated from the project’s first conference, held at the University of Portsmouth in 2016. Both the conference and the subsequent book brought together a diverse range of academic approaches, with contributions from historians, geographers, anthropologists, folklorists and literary scholars. When approached by the publisher, Boydell and Brewer, to develop it into a book, I was encouraged to expand the scope beyond a predominantly European focus. This represented an ambitious scaling up from my previous research and publications, which have focussed on magic, ghosts, and urban legends in nineteenth-century Britain.

To facilitate that broader scope, I had to seek out scholars around the world who shared an interest in the themes of the book, and that led to a fascinating trawl through Academia.edu. Long before we were all working online due to the Coronavirus, this meant collaborating with scholars who I have never met, in places as varied as Russia, South Africa, the USA and Australia. Given that a third of the contributors were complete strangers to me, I was hugely impressed by their consummate professionalism and the way they got behind the publication.

My previous book editing experience was as a co-editor on Port Towns and Urban Cultures (2016) (See http://porttowns.port.ac.uk/port-towns-book/), a collaboration with fellow UoP historians, Professor Brad Beaven and Dr Rob James. For Supernatural Cities, the challenges of structuring the book, reviewing chapters, and steering it to completion fell solely to me. This necessarily resulted in a slower process and, again, I was impressed with the contributors’ patience and commitment. Engaging with chapters that ranged from witchcraft in nineteenth-century Paris, to the Goat Man scare near Washington DC in the 1970s, to Manchester’s post-industrial psychogeography and the ghost lore of twenty-first century Beijing certainly took me out of my comfort zone. However, as I have repeatedly found in my research, it is often when we dare to take that step that we develop as scholars.

The Goat Man of Washington D.C.

The book sets out three ways of understanding the relationship between the supernatural and the urban environment. The first section on enchantment considers the empowering influence of magical beliefs and the ability of folkloric tales to transform and enrich our understanding of the urban environment. Examples are drawn from Paris, London, Limerick and the emerging modern cities of South Africa. Focussing on less positive aspects, the second section uses the supernatural and the Gothic to explore social fears, environmental anxieties, and the demonising of various urban ‘others’. Here, case studies are drawn from New York, Manila, Washington D.C., Tokyo, the post-Soviet era industrial cities of the Urals, and the London Underground. The third section explores ghosts, spectrality, and their links to haunting, historical guilt and trauma, and memory. Chapters focus on the Australian goldfield town of Ballarat, Mexico City, Beijing and Manchester. Across the collection, and the broad geographical sweep of its examples, it is fascinating to see the way these themes prove universal while taking on their own local cultural and historical expressions.

H.P. Lovecraft, The Horror at Red Hook (1927)

The book seeks to make an important contribution to our understanding of how urban environments, both past and present, inspire our imaginations, prompt cultural insecurities, and generate spatial fears. If it helps stimulate greater multidisciplinary discussion between scholars of the supernatural and urban cultures, and if it can encourage dialogue between eastern and western perspectives (and northern and southern hemispheres), then it will have more than fulfilled my ambitions and hopes for the project.

For a full outline of the book’s contents see https://boydellandbrewer.com/supernatural-cities.html. If inspired to read more, Supernatural Cities is available as an ebook via the University Library

April 23, 2020
Goblin scullery maids, ghostly miners and cannibal sailors: my experience of studying for a PhD at the University of Portsmouth

Dr Eilís Phillips followed three years of undergraduate study at the University of Portsmouth with a three-year PhD on Victorian monsters, supervised by Dr Karl Bell, Reader in History at the University. Her work is an inspiration to many, not least to my own students studying ideas of the monstrous in the 17^th century Civil War context. Impressively, while studying with and teaching at the University, Eilís has combined her academic studies with regular performances as a musician at many locations in Portsmouth and the surrounding areas – ed.

My PhD was a three-year, CEISR-funded interdisciplinary project which used an approach based in History – grounded in historiography – but explored theories from other fields such as Cultural Studies and Monster Theory. I studied the increased popularity of monstrous stereotypes for working-class people in nineteenth-century writing, as created and propagated by journalists and middle-class authors. I split my chapters into different monstrous archetypes and these covered a range of monsters. For example, I looked at the ways in which perceptions of spatial environments as monstrous could affect the human beings who lived and worked within them. Victorian London is a key example of this phenomenon, as many reports described the city as a sentient and malicious force for evil, hell-bent on corrupting its inhabitants. I also examined stories of Satanic arsonists, goblin scullery maids, ghostly miners and cannibal sailors. Sometimes, authors would use these comparisons in satirical drawings or as derogatory analogies. In other cases, the reports would draw upon popular folklore and fairy tales and even Gothic literature in order insinuate that working-class people were spiritually, and even genetically monstrous. In these accounts I found interesting contradictions and anachronisms. Just as elites were mocking those poorer than themselves for purportedly backwards ‘superstitious’ beliefs, at the same time they were creating their own brand of contemporary folklore partly pieced together from these stories, using them to produce monstrous identities.

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, Francisco Goya, c. 1799

Overall, I discovered that this proliferation of negative stereotypes operated as a ‘monstrous economy’. It was a network of ideas, memes and characteristics which authors for newspapers, books and reports traded back and forth. The central motivation underpinning this booming trade was a desire to mitigate a sense of middle-class guilt and of culpability in the suffering of workers and the poor in Victorian society. As greater awareness grew amongst affluent readers of the sufferings of working-class life – such as the plight of miners toiling in life-threatening conditions underground – so concerns about wealthy society’s role in such hardships became a source of angst which needed a catharsis. By depicting the working class as monsters, authors could position the wealthy as kindly benefactors of a monstrous working class whose hardships in life were portrayed as pre-determined and deserved. This act stripped workers of their humanity and worked to absolve middle-class readers of any social guilt over their suffering.

Eilís in character

In terms of my personal PhD journey, I should say that every PhD experience, like every individual, is unique. That is part of what makes undertaking one so challenging, and exciting. Whether you are able to choose your own topic, or are working on a project whose parameters have been outlined by someone else, ultimately the direction the research takes is shaped by you, and your decisions and discoveries. That can be a daunting prospect; it offers the researcher a lot of freedom but it can also cause you to constantly question your own judgement. As an historian, you might wonder if you have chosen the right sources, or even if you’re making the ‘right’ argument. It’s important to remember that having doubts, and continually re-evaluating your progress are a necessary part of undertaking any kind of critical research. The PhD is an experiment, and one which teaches you as much about your own approach to solving problems and encountering enigmas as it does about the research question you are focused upon answering.

I was extremely lucky to have an incredible supervisory team who supported me at every step of the process. A huge part of what makes a PhD engaging can be the discussions you have with your supervisors. There were so many times throughout my PhD when I would find myself encountering a knotty problem in my research, but by talking things over with Karl Bell (my First Supervisor) I’d be able to see things more clearly and would come away feeling enthusiastic about my research again. In general, I found it extremely helpful to talk to my supervisors and Faculty colleagues about academic life. It’s important to surround yourself with morale support and find other researchers with whom you can share ideas and experiences with. Attending seminars, spending time with other postgrads, and chatting about our shared challenges made things easier. Overall, it was a huge undertaking and took a lot of personal willpower and determination, but it has given me an immense sense of achievement. I still find my research topic fascinating and I am looking forward to continuing my research in whatever form it takes.

February 24, 2020
A Christmas reading list

In this festive-themed blog, Dr Katy Gibbons, Senior Lecturer in History, recommends a few texts that feature a link to Christmas. Katy specialises in the religious and cultural history of 16^th century England and Europe, and teaches amongst other units, a Special Subject ‘Conflict, Conspiracy, Consensus? Religious Identities in the Reign of Elizabeth I’.

With Christmas fast approaching, no doubt many historians are adding reading material to their Christmas lists! For some historians, though, Christmas is the focus of the research they carry out – and there is a wealth of academic history that considers the changing significance of this festival over many centuries. So, for our blog readers, here are our pick of history-writing about Christmas, each of which is connected to the research and teaching activity of History at Portsmouth. All of these are available for our current students via the University Library – so, happy Christmas, and happy reading!

1). Given the central importance of Christmas to the Christian Calendar, what happened when England’s Christian population was divided by the Reformation? Did Protestants and Catholics begin to find separate ways in which to mark Christmas? Here Phebe Jensen considers festivity and Christmas celebrations amongst Catholic families in Protestant Britain:

https://capitadiscovery.co.uk/port/items/888707?query=region+religion+patronage&resultsUri=items%3Fquery%3Dregion%2Breligion%2Bpatronage

2). What did Christmas-lovers do in 17^th century England, when the celebration and ‘merriment’ of Christmas was officially outlawed by the authorities in the Commonwealth period? How ‘popular’ a move was it, and did people resist or ignore these demands? Here Christmas is part of Bernard Capp’s wider consideration of Puritan attempts to regulate all kinds of social behaviour:

https://capitadiscovery.co.uk/port/items/1296826?query=england%27s+culture+wars&resultsUri=items%3Fquery%3Dengland%2527s%2Bculture%2Bwars

3). Christmas as we think of it today is often seen to be a Victorian ‘invention’. Here Neil Armstrong considers one aspect of the Victorian Christmas – the practice of sending Christmas greetings cards:

http://jvc.oup.com/2013/12/21/christmas-greetings-2/

4). Perhaps one of the most famous Christmas scenes relating to the global conflicts of the 20^th century is that of the Christmas truce on the Western Front. Revisiting this is particularly relevant given the 2018 centenary of the end of the First World War. Here Terri Blom Crockers offers a challenge to older interpretations of what the truce meant:

https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/portsmouth-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4012423

5). And, finally, Christmas is a time when much TV (and films) are watched! It also sparks the production of Christmas-themed material. Some of this has spooky content, such as the adaptations of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Here Derek Johnston considers the significance of the Christmas Ghost Story in a number of different formats and contexts:

https://capitadiscovery.co.uk/port/items/1214412?query=christmas+history&resultsUri=items%3Fquery%3Dchristmas%2Bhistory%26offset%3D10

And before you settle down to watch that festive film, have a read about the ways in which Christmas has been rendered on film in this edited collection from Mark Connelly:

https://capitadiscovery.co.uk/port/items/507971?query=christmas+at+the+movies&resultsUri=items%3Fquery%3Dchristmas%2Bat%2Bthe%2Bmovies

December 14, 2018
Wymering Manor: Portsmouth’s oldest domestic building

In this blog, the fourth in a series of posts looking at sites of historical interest in Portsmouth, Dr Katy Gibbons, Senior Lecturer in History, discusses the significant but often overlooked history of Wymering Manor, the oldest domestic building in the city of Portsmouth. Katy’s research specialisms focus on the religious and cultural history of early modern England, and specifically on the Catholic communities living under Protestant rule. This connects to her teaching at Levels 4 and 6 of the History curriculum, particularly specialist modules on religious identity in Elizabethan England.

For a place rich in heritage, Wymering Manor, on the outskirts of Portsmouth, is one of its often-overlooked gems.

Wymering Manor

This grade 2 listed building is the oldest domestic building in the city. It is a sixteenth century manor house (with earlier foundations), with an interesting and colourful history, but is rather ‘off the beaten track’ of Portsmouth’s visitor attractions. Wymering Manor provides a fascinating route into the changing history of the local area, the varied use and repurposing of historic buildings and their contents, and into contemporary issues relating to the conservation of public heritage. It also connects in different ways to the research interests of staff at the University of Portsmouth, including those within the History team.

Wymering Manor

In its current form, the house was built in the later sixteenth century, by the Bruning family. The Brunings were Catholics at a time when England’s identity was increasingly being wedded to Protestantism: whilst part of the elite social group, the Brunings would have been part of a religious minority. Since that time, the Manor has been home to a number of different inhabitants, including the vicar of the parish, who established an Anglican Religious order there in the nineteenth century; the British army during the Second World War, and, most recently, to countless numbers of visitors in its stint as a Youth Hostel. Located next door to the ancient parish church of Wymering, it has played an important part in the local community.

The fabric and contents of the house itself reflect its changing use over the centuries. It presents historians, architects and others with a number of puzzles, as it is not always clear when changes were made, by whom, and for what purpose! There is the intriguing question of possible priest holes: spaces were built into the fabric of Catholic houses to hide priests if the Protestant authorities carried out a search – but the dating of these at Wymering raise some interesting questions. Some of the internal structures and decorations also pose puzzles – how ‘original’ are some of the fireplaces for example – have they been moved from other locations in the house, or brought in as part of later ‘home improvements’ from other domestic settings?

Rear view of Wymering Manor

Wymering Manor is also associated with a number of ghost stories, providing us with another route into thinking about the ways in which Portsmouth and its surrounding areas, are thought about and remembered. A number of legends are associated with the building, and it is a popular location for paranormal investigations.

The Manor has survived, if precariously, whilst the community around it has changed as a result of the expansion of the urban area of Portsmouth. However, it has continued to have an impact on its local community. The house is now in the hands of the Wymering Manor Trust, who have taken on the significant challenge of preserving it for the use of future generations, and of providing a community hub for a range of different cultural and social events.

For further information on Wymering Manor click here.

For further examples of academic research on Catholic History: see the journal British Catholic History, edited by University of Portsmouth’s Dr Katy Gibbons.

For those interested in Portsmouth’s supernatural past visit the Darkfest site.

November 22, 2018