Identity, Community and Victorian Medievalism in the South West

For the Victorians, the Middle Ages were a vital touchstone in debates on religion, politics and society. Consequently, a clear picture of Victorian medievalism is crucial to understanding the culture of the period, and our inheritance from it. Medievalists looked to the past to make sense of a rapidly technologizing, urbanizing, globalizing present. Perhaps as a result of the extensive scope and remarkable complexity of this movement, scholars have tended to approach Victorian medievalism as a national movement. But writers, artists and architects in South West England were interested in the past as a way to define what was exceptional, authentic and exemplary about their region and its people -- as distinct from the nation as a whole. Our initial research reveals that South West medievalism responded in distinct ways to a growing sense of national homogeneity. According to South West medievalists, the universalizing, cosmopolitan urbanity of the metropolis threatened local identities they associated with such values as authenticity, a love of liberty, sympathy and a poetic sensibility intimately connected to the landscape of Cornwall and Devon.

This case-study will explore how communities turned to their regional histories and local landscapes in response to economic, technological and social change. This study will investigate how an influential aesthetic movement was used to promote a sense of community grounded in local identities that stretched back over the centuries. We will explore how designers and writers borrowed from the literary artefacts and visual imagery of their region's past in order to forge an aesthetic that they thought capable of inspiring 'sensus communis' - that is, a shared sensibility about what it means for the life of a community to flourish. Their particular vision of sensus communis did not aim at the universal as was the case with other artists and thinkers; rather, it aimed at the local and particular. We will trace how South West medievalists constructed ideas of community inseparable from local history and landscape. These ideas, we will show, were reflected in the art, architecture and literature they produced.

We believe that this is a timely study in light of recent challenges to retain and strengthen local character in the face of a globalizing world. Public attention has recently turned to consider the significance of the local within the global. However these are not solely new concerns: social disaffection, the loss of regional character and the disintegration of community were important issues in the nineteenth century. The discourse of Victorian medievalism lies at the root of our contemporary understanding of global vs. local. When communities feel under threat they reach for a common past. This study of Victorian Medievalism in South West England will demonstrate the ways in which the turn to a regionally-distinct past influenced the physical shape of the region and the cultural shape of its communities in often profound ways.

Our project will impact the following:
1) The Public:
Working with Dr Julien Parsons (Collections and Interpretation Officer) and Dr Thomas Cadbury (Curator of Antiquities) at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter (RAMM), we will launch an exhibition on Victorian Medievalism, which will open in 2013. This exhibition will have both a significant regional context and a wider remit, with materials gathered from local institutions and National Trust buildings, as well as such national galleries as the Victoria & Albert Museum, the National Gallery and the Tate Britain. This exhibition will encourage the public to engage with cultural heritage and it will stimulate tourism to local historic sites, as many of the objects on display will be linked to key architectural sites in the South West, such as Knightshayes Court in Tiverton, Treverbyn Vean near St Neot and Castle Drogo at Drewsteignton.

2) Beneficiaries in the Cultural Heritage Industry:
As the investigators will engage in genuinely collaborative work with conservationists, curators and other professionals in the heritage industry, the exhibition will make good contacts between the university and the museum, between researchers and the cultural heritage industry. The investigators will be working closely with project partners at the RAMM in the planning of the exhibition, as well as with collaborators at other galleries and at National Trust residences, with whom we will be sharing expertise. In the planning of the exhibition, the investigators will also consult architectural advocacy organizations (the Pugin Society, the Georgian Society, the Victorian Society, English Heritage's Cathedrals and Churches Advisory Committee).

3) Longer Term Impact on Policy:
Our South West case study will demonstrate the processes by which local British identities and regional allegiances are developed and fostered through literature, art, architecture and other cultural materials. Through interactive responses and a series of questionnaires, we will obtain feedback on the user experience of our South West exhibits. This will enable us and others to measure the impact of this project and to get a sense of how individuals interact with their cultural heritage. In scholarly circles and beyond, there is much discussion about the place of literature, its relation to other forms of cultural expression, and its role in the wider community. We would aim to address this debate by making our findings available (through talks, meetings and a journal publication) to those who work in areas of cultural policy and heritage advocacy.

4) Local Archives, Regional Culture and the Public
Our research will make use of neglected local archival holdings, which would be of great interest not only to researchers but to members of the wider community. We will make visible materials about the lives and work of such local historical figures as Sabine Baring-Gould, a hugely popular and prolific writer, ballad collector and architectural restorer in the nineteenth century. The public appeal of collections of such outstanding quality as are found in the South West will be high: the architectural artefacts and colourful life of the previously mentioned Henry Hems encourage peopel to feel connected to their communities, which impacts the quality of that community's cultural life, as well as that of the wider nation.