'Susanna Hall and Hall's Croft: Gender, Cultural Memory, Heritage'
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Brighton
Department Name: Sch of Humanities & Social Sci (SHSS)
Abstract
At a time when our shared experience of history and heritage sites is at a crisis point, as dual global crises of climate change and Covid meet positive movements towards greater inclusivity of cultural memory, 'Susanna Hall and Hall's Croft: Gender, Cultural Memory, Heritage' will provide an urgent intervention in how we experience literary and cultural heritage, both local and global. It will offer the first ever full case study of Susanna Hall (William Shakespeare's eldest daughter) and her home, Hall's Croft, owned by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, the organisational partner for the project. Rectifying Susanna's sideline position in cultural memory is both practically vital in increasing understanding of women's history and heritage and powerfully symbolic in building an inclusive, transparent future for heritage presentation and academic research.
The project challenges how early modern women have been historicised and mediated in the construction of literary and cultural heritage, both local and global, via a case study of Susanna Hall (née Shakespeare) and her home in Stratford-upon-Avon. Susanna's house, Hall's Croft, is open to the public and attracts 85,000 visitors each year. Susanna lived to 66 years of age, during which lifetime she married, had a daughter and suffered the major scandal of a public accusation of adultery, countered by a slander case she brought, together with her husband the renowned physician, John Hall. She outlived John to manage a household, negotiate the sale of her Hall's manuscripts and probably took over aspects of his medical work in the form of healing and acting as a 'wisewoman'.
Via new research based on a range of evidence, including from the first complete modern English translation (Wells & Edmondson, 2020) of John Hall's Casebooks, the project contextualises Susanna within the female population of her home town, Stratford-upon-Avon, in her own time. Primarily, the project scrutinises the construction of Susanna and her home as a site of cultural memory and heritage both nationally and internationally. The project re-examines Susanna's contribution, both as a 'real' and as an imagined woman, to private and public life and to textual and material history. It investigates Hall's Croft's case to interrogate the gendered nature of cultural memory and heritage and their relationship with individual and group memory, locally, nationally and globally.
This project presents new ways to present heritage narratives of early modern women (or, more accurately, their truncation or omission) and the construction of literary cultural heritage, specifically early modern women in the Shakespeare narrative and heritage spaces. The intersections of women's history at Hall's Croft and the construction of Susanna Hall are paradigmatic of a wider need for the re-mediation of women's narratives in heritage presentation. This project presents new research and examines how archive sources have been utilised in past narratives to construct and represent Susanna and Hall's Croft. The project reveals the importance of the site as a space to explore early modern women's health and wellbeing, literacy and resource management practices as well as questioning the dominance of father and husband in our cultural memory of Susanna.
Examining female agency, power and identity in constructing discourses and narratives of memory and heritage, the project uses Susanna's life, reputation - and subsequent historicisation, fictionalisation and mediation - both to scrutinise and to intervene in how sites and narratives construct cultural memory. The project utilises innovative digital humanities technologies to create outputs that encourage autonomy in how we experience heritage narratives, both in academic and leisure contexts, lifting the lid on how academic research informs heritage presentations and inviting users to play an active part in constructing shared heritage narratives.
The project challenges how early modern women have been historicised and mediated in the construction of literary and cultural heritage, both local and global, via a case study of Susanna Hall (née Shakespeare) and her home in Stratford-upon-Avon. Susanna's house, Hall's Croft, is open to the public and attracts 85,000 visitors each year. Susanna lived to 66 years of age, during which lifetime she married, had a daughter and suffered the major scandal of a public accusation of adultery, countered by a slander case she brought, together with her husband the renowned physician, John Hall. She outlived John to manage a household, negotiate the sale of her Hall's manuscripts and probably took over aspects of his medical work in the form of healing and acting as a 'wisewoman'.
Via new research based on a range of evidence, including from the first complete modern English translation (Wells & Edmondson, 2020) of John Hall's Casebooks, the project contextualises Susanna within the female population of her home town, Stratford-upon-Avon, in her own time. Primarily, the project scrutinises the construction of Susanna and her home as a site of cultural memory and heritage both nationally and internationally. The project re-examines Susanna's contribution, both as a 'real' and as an imagined woman, to private and public life and to textual and material history. It investigates Hall's Croft's case to interrogate the gendered nature of cultural memory and heritage and their relationship with individual and group memory, locally, nationally and globally.
This project presents new ways to present heritage narratives of early modern women (or, more accurately, their truncation or omission) and the construction of literary cultural heritage, specifically early modern women in the Shakespeare narrative and heritage spaces. The intersections of women's history at Hall's Croft and the construction of Susanna Hall are paradigmatic of a wider need for the re-mediation of women's narratives in heritage presentation. This project presents new research and examines how archive sources have been utilised in past narratives to construct and represent Susanna and Hall's Croft. The project reveals the importance of the site as a space to explore early modern women's health and wellbeing, literacy and resource management practices as well as questioning the dominance of father and husband in our cultural memory of Susanna.
Examining female agency, power and identity in constructing discourses and narratives of memory and heritage, the project uses Susanna's life, reputation - and subsequent historicisation, fictionalisation and mediation - both to scrutinise and to intervene in how sites and narratives construct cultural memory. The project utilises innovative digital humanities technologies to create outputs that encourage autonomy in how we experience heritage narratives, both in academic and leisure contexts, lifting the lid on how academic research informs heritage presentations and inviting users to play an active part in constructing shared heritage narratives.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Ailsa Grant Ferguson (Principal Investigator / Fellow) |
| Title | 'Comforts Cordial': A Garden |
| Description | This garden is based on the project's research on the medical casebook of John Hall and further research into the treatment of early modern women's menstrual, reproductive and mental health. The garden was designed to my specification and vision by Sian Cooper (horticulturalist, garden historian and head of gardens at Shakespeare Birthplace Trust). The garden uses plants that were simples (single medicinal ingredients) used in treatment. The space is created in a non-linear way and is fully accessible. The central circular arch represents women's cyclical experiences, bodies and histories. Early modern women's writing adorns the bee boxes for sustainable immersive exhibits. Wording from Susanna Hall's epitaph is engraved into pottery planters made by local craftspeople to engage visitors into the world of early modern women's memorial writing and practices. The garden will be open for use by non-profit groups from spring 2024 and was fully completed in late 2023. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | The first few events have used the garden to engage with local user groups (eg a wellbeing event for local teens and a presentation event of the garden to local charitable group leaders, such as those working with refugee support charity and a homelessness action group). However, the impacts will be better visible after the main project output launch in June and the first regular users have engaged from this spring. I will update this section accordingly as soon as I have the data (before the next submission period). |
| Title | Hall's Croft Spatial Archive |
| Description | A full realised interactive 3d spatial model of three rooms of Hall's Croft, containing artefacts related to the research strands of the project around Susanna Hall's life and equivalent women's lives in the early to mid 17th centuries. Each object can be accessed as an augmented reality object and therefore digitally placed in the user's own environment. More archive material will be added on an ongoing basis, including an archive of the project itself, which will be accessed through a doorway (this element is necessarily not complete until impacts can be archived). The product was completed in 2023 (by Arcade Ltd, under my direction) and will be publicly launched online in June 2024, in line with the partner organisation's engagement theme of women's histories. I will update this submission with the public access website at that time (please note it will be entirely free to access globally). |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | Please note that the product has been realised but will be made publicly available in June 2024, so I will update this section prior to the next submission with any notable impacts after that date. |
| Title | Susanna's Cabinet: Augmented Reality Exhibition |
| Description | Using some of the artefacts created for the Hall's Croft Spatial Archive, this is an augmented reality exhibition for use in schools, for the general public and in a range of settings where a more compact and highly accessible approach is preferred. The exhibit resembles the inside of a cabinet (using the outside of one in the collection of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust), with objects related to early modern women's lives on each shelf. Users can choose an object, find information on it and related aspects of early modern life, and they can use their own device to 'place' it in their own environment via augmented reality technology. The product was completed in 2023 (by Arcade Ltd, under my direction) and will be publicly launched online in June 2024, in line with the partner organisation's engagement theme of women's histories. I will update this submission with the public access website at that time (please note it will be entirely free to access globally). |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | Please note that the product has been realised but will be made publicly available in June 2024, so I will update this section prior to the next submission with any notable impacts after that date. |
| Title | Susanna: A Soundscape |
| Description | Based on my concept for a soundscape on early modern women, the medicinal garden and the domestic space, I commissioned composer Iain Chambers to create this piece, using material scripted by me and my named collaborator, actor Lucy Phelps, including performances by Lucy and early modern music specialist, Dr Jennifer Waghorn. The Soundscape will sit within the Digital Spatial Archive but also be available as a freestanding asset accessible on the SBT website. All access will be free of charge. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | This will be officially launched to the public in May/June 2024 as part of the digital launch. I will update with user feedback and impact development at next submission. |
| Description | Please note: the following narrative is provided as a 'work in progress' update only, as the project is currently one year in and there is still more research As part of the underpinning research at the core of the project, worked on creating a set of comparative data available on Susanna Hall (the eldest daughter of William Shakespeare) in a. archive sources, b. biographies of Shakespeare (and John Hall, her husband, though these are few), c. prose fictions and d. performance contexts and establish primary source precedents around early modern women's lives (especially legal, healthcare and outdoor domestic space contexts) that contextualise claims made by previous historians, as well as the direct primary data we have on Susanna Hall. This core strand of research was always likely to yield both significant negative and positive results, in the sense that the project aims to explore the mediation and presentation of Susanna and her home, in academic and public-facing presentations. Significant negative results include areas in which I, with my Research Assistant, pursued claims through pathways of sources and discovering their non-existence in original sources. We build a set of information that presents the provenance of some key claims to establish fixed points in narratives that have been presented in heritage, creative and academic contexts to date. Other research strands yielded new data transcriptions and examinations of manuscript sources in the SBT collection as yet unstudied. These sources are providing highly promising new findings around the use of medical, horticultural and cookery texts as a means of female textual communication and community-building through the seventeenth century. |
| Exploitation Route | In addition to the planned outputs for the project (including the symposium, held on 24th April 2023 and research papers in-process), I will be submitting a proposal next year for a monograph on Susanna Hall, as there was too much material for one chapter of a book. Rather than simply working towards an edited collection, the project has led me to form collaboration with colleagues (UK and US) to produce a collaborative panel and with the view towards a more major edited collection to follow. The project has also led to a new strand of research that I am developing with a US colleague on early modern women's epitaphs, textual transmission and memory. These outcomes will inform a wider burgeoning conversation on the role of Shakespeare in cultural memory but further will open up two newer precise fields of study, providing both theoretical underpinning and a case study: a.gendered cultural memory beyond trauma studies, b.early modern womanhood as a key site for heritage narratives in the UK and Europe, c. gendered early modern memorial writing and afterlives, d.spatial archives and early modern studies. The outcomes of this project will directly ignite these three fields, both in new research and in UG and PG teaching. Beyond the academy, there are key areas the project outcomes are predicted to be taken forward by practitioners in heritage, performance and creative practice and healthcare: 1. wellbeing and the heritage site (a.online, b.outdoors); 2. Menstrual and reproductive health and women's history; 3. Sustainable heritage and creative practices. To this end, I know already of the uptake of our work to date by the RSC in a current project (see impact). I hope to be able to report on progress in realizing healthcare and wellbeing-related uptake, as well as sustainable practice in future submissions. I am currently preparing a submission for a Follow-On Funding for Impact bid to explore new and exciting ideas for the use of project outputs, sites and findings in clinical practices of social prescription. Beyond the academy, there are key areas the project outcomes are predicted to be taken forward by practitioners in heritage, performance and creative practice and healthcare: 1. wellbeing and the heritage site (a.online, b.outdoors); 2. Menstrual and reproductive health and women's history; 3. Sustainable heritage and creative practices. To this end, I know already of the uptake of our work to date by the RSC in a current project (see impact). I hope to be able to report on progress in realising healthcare and wellbeing-related uptake, as well as sustainable practice template use at the next submission, once further evaluative data are available. |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy Creative Economy Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) Education Environment Healthcare Leisure Activities including Sports Recreation and Tourism Culture Heritage Museums and Collections |
| Description | This project has generated significant opportunities for impact, both anticipated and novel. The project's work to create a diverse range of tools through which to explore, present and engage both researchers and the general public in Susanna Hall, Hall's Croft and the wider issues of how we de/re/construct cultural memory of early modern women, aimed to establish inclusive and innovative pathways through engagement to impact. The project produced a wellbeing garden for local vulnerable groups (initial visits from group leaders had already taken place and a member of staff at the partner organisation is managing the usage bookings for the space), a digital spatial archive was completed (for public launch June 2024, to align with partner organisation engagement theme on women's histories), digital exhibition was completed (upgraded from downloadable to augmented reality, creating greater interactivity, same launch date as digital spatial archive), wellbeing-focused soundscape (completed - launch date June 24) and video loop (same launch date). Media and creative industry interest in them has already been high, and new engagements and partnerships are resulting, notably working with the Royal Shakespeare Company and their commissioned independent artists to co-ordinate the delivery of community spaces and projects that pool their commissioned socially-engaged art project for this season with our outputs in a few months' time. This was not anticipated during the bid or early part of the project and provides new opportunities for broadening potential positive impacts for the project across wider communities and setting a template for collaborative work across heritage and creative industries. Groups will be able to book time in the garden from April May (due to weather restrictions) and systems are in place at Shakespeare Birthplace Trust to ensure this usage is maximised. During the development of the outdoor and digital outputs, new opportunities for impact are emerging, relating specifically to my developing understanding of their potential for social prescription, which I plan to articulate in a Follow On Funding for Impact bid shortly, as has developed as a new direction for the enduring value of the outputs that we did not foresee. Since the end of the project, I have involved two colleagues, one a medical doctor, the other a psychologist, who are supporting me in my bid to create social prescription opportunities. Academic impacts are too are in progress, though again and a new breakthrough led to a new international collaboration with a colleague in a US HEI, with whom I am working to produce a collaborative pair of papers that will articulate a new hypothesis of the authorship of key epitaph texts that will break new ground in understanding early modern women's writing, engagement with memory and social standing. We have formed a team with a colleague the University of Oxford to present a panel to the British Shakespeare Association and are awaiting the outcome. We anticipate this will be a highly significant breakthrough in inter-disciplinary work on women's history of the period as well as a key link between concepts of individual and cultural memory in the first half of the seventeenth and twenty-first centuries. We are also planning a major future research project expanding this work into national and international contexts. Please note: this narrative will be updated with further detail next year, once in-progress publications are confirmed and user feedback has been provided by SBT can begin to inform my understanding of the developing impacts of the project. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2022 |
| Sector | Creative Economy,Healthcare,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural |
| Description | 'Hall's Croft': a Lecture as part of the 'Living Shakespeare' leisure course at Shakespeare Birthplace Trust |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This talk was given to leisure learners at Stratford-upon-Avon, most of whom are older people including some retired and current theatre and education practitioners. The talk was around the research I am undertaking on the place of Hall's Croft (heritage site) in how we present early modern women in heritage contexts. The talk sparked a lively and positive response, with audience members taking part in a Q&A as well as in 1:1 conversations afterwards. Many were sharing their memories of performance practice and the site itself. I have been invited to return in May to deliver a new talk to explore the progress in the project and reignited the conversation with this audience. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/leisure-courses/living-shakespeare/ |
| Description | 'Looking for Susanna Hall': 'Research Conversation' series invited lecture for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This was an invited lecture, given online as part of a series entitled 'Research Conversations' for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. The session is an hour, consisting of a lecture followed by a Q&A with the chair putting listeners' questions. The discussion was positive and lively, with a range of experts and non-experts taking active part. The lecture is now permanently available (in auto only) without charge for further listeners to engage (see link). I have been invited to undertake a follow up lecture later in the project. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/education/research-scholars/research-conversations/ |
| Description | 'Susanna Hall and Hall's Croft: Early Modern Women and Cultural Memory': Talk for Furman University (USA) students in Stratford-upon-Avon |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Undergraduate students |
| Results and Impact | This talk, though titled the same as the school-level talk was a version geared towards undergraduate students, in which I talked in more depth about cultural memory and applying theories and understandings of this to early modern women and literary heritage. The talk was followed by a q&a session and produced lively debate and 1:1 conversations afterwards. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | 'Susanna Hall and Hall's Croft: Early Modern Women and Cultural Memory': invited talk for Philips Exeter Academy (USA) at Stratford-upon-Avon |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | This talk was given to a visiting group from Philips Exeter Academy in the US, a co-educational international school, and was given by invitation from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. The talk covered what we mean by 'cultural memory', how the project is using Susanna Hall as a paradigm via which to explore storytelling around early modern women and how a range of outcomes might inform practice. There was positive engagement from the students (aged around 17-18 years old), including a lively and joyful q&a and some in-depth 1:1 conversations around the subject afterwards. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Article on the project in The Observer newspaper: 'A New Shakespeare Plot' (17/8/22, page 13; also available on The Guardian Online - see link) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This article was a half-page prominently featured in The Observer (print circulation approx 140k) on page 13 and afterwards released as an article on The Guardian Online. The article was based on an interview I gave and written by Dalya Alberge in close consolation with me. Following its release, I was approached by a range of interested parties seeking collaborations, including theatre practitioners and academics, as well as requests for further media engagement, including interviews pending for two wide-circulation magazines and discussions for a potential follow-up piece in the Observer when the garden output is completed. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/jul/17/a-new-shakespeare-plot-garden-of-bards-daughter-to-b... |
| Description | Artists' Lab: 'Susanna and the Elders' |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The aim of this three-day Creative Lab was for attendees to explore and produce creative response to the biblical narrative of Susanna and the Elders in the context of its presentation in early modern art and culture. The lab included access to a curated group of paintings, textiles and text from the collections of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and beyond, presented by professional curators. Artists were invited to explore their responses to early modern women through this narrative and its presentation, while working in the Hall's Croft space and garden to connect with the heritage site itself. Artists are still in touch and one has begun to share artworks resulting from the Lab. I will update the outcomes and impacts as they emerge and are completed. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Podcast programme: 'That Shakespeare Life' (USA): invited guest for dedicate episode on project, entitled 'Plants in Susanna's Garden, with Dr Ailsa Grant Ferguson' |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | 'That Shakespeare Life' was recently ranked second in the world for Shakespeare history after the Folger Shakespeare Library's podcast. The show, devised and presented by Cassidy Cash, has over 140k downloads, and averages 4,000 listeners a month, 800-1000/week, in addition to several thousand social media and email followers. Most of its audience is in the US, but it also has a strong following in the UK, Australia, Canada, and Brazil. This episode, on which I was invited to participate, focused entirely on my project, in particular the garden work and early modern women's history in relation to plants and medicine. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | http://www.cassidycash.com/ep230 |