History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

Tag Archives | Surrey

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Urban football as a nineteenth-century blood sport

Second-year UoP student Mandy Wrenn discusses a 1846 engraving showing a large group of men playing football in the centre of the town of Kingston in Surrey, and the contemporary concerns over the control of urban spaces and popular leisure activities it reflects. This piece was originally written for the Fear and Fun module, taught by Dr Rob James and Dr Karl Bell. The primary source is set in 1846, at a time of continued transition in Victorian Britain from the past to modernity. The depiction of the game, with a large crowd of men playing a game of football in the centre of a town, will have been received […]

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Heritage and Memory: Warlingham War Memorial

Benjamin Locke, a second year History student at the University of Portsmouth, has written the following blog entry on Warlingham War Memorial for the Introduction to Historical Research module. Benjamin considers the messages provided by the memorial’s imagery and how they reflect the social expectations of the time of its unveiling. The module is co-ordinated by Dr Maria Cannon, Lecturer in Early Modern History at Portsmouth. ‘Heritage is the valorisation and preservation by individuals and groups of traces of the past that are thought to embody their cultural identity’. [1] The values and practices of heritage preservation are determined by major political and economic trade-offs, both of which determine what […]

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