Electrifying the country house: taking stories of innovation to new audiences

For a world in which scientific innovation and historical tradition matter equally, a key resource for understanding both is the academic discipline of history of science and technology. But what of country houses, so often associated with the luxurious but extinct grandeur of Edwardian Britain? What of the upper classes who stereotypically cared more for the grandiose chandelier and silk furnishings than for the circuit-board or test tube? Surprisingly for some, there are deep and fertile connections that bridge the 'Two Cultures' divide between science and high society, in ways that history of science and technology is uniquely placed to mediate. Accordingly this project brings together the resources of social history with histories of technology and design, by drawing on the insights of PI Graeme Gooday's AHRB/AHRC-funded monograph Domesticating Electricity, to harness the role of such venues as key social laboratories in the late Victorian invention of electric lighting. After all it was at Cragside in Northumbria that electricity first lit the British home in 1881, with owner Lord Armstrong supporting the incandescent lighting experiments of his Newcastle friend Joseph Swan. Adopting the new illuminant slightly later, Lotherton Hall in Leeds and Standen in East Grinstead both still have original early electric lighting, marking them as pioneering sites of hi-tech illumination at the turn of the 20th century. Seen in this spirit, these sites offer an under-utilized resource for integrating public experience of social history and physical science for adults and young people alike.

The proposed project 'Electrifying the Country House' will work with the houses to develop generic resources to help visitors understand both the science of electric lighting and how these (and other) country houses played a crucial role in bringing that science into the home. At the same time, the special history and circumstances of each house will be cherished with dedicated bespoke resources on electrical lighting history that epitomize what the National Trust highlight as 'The Spirit of Place'. To complement Gooday's expertise, Abigail Harrison-Moore brings a long-standing relationship with Standen, and the work of its designer, Philip Webb, especially in relation to the Arts and Crafts aesthetic of the period, as well as her experience in teaching about the country house. The two have recently co-published on the relationship between electricity and aesthetics, at Standen and elsewhere.

Over the course of a year, the project's Postdoctoral researcher will work with the three houses to co-produce the specific kinds of visitor resources that each requires. These will include family packs and Key Stage 2 resources for schools, building upon a small-scale pilot project undertaken at Lotherton Hall with Gooday and University of Leeds colleagues last year. As well as training house staff how to deploy the resources supplied, the project will share activities and progress via Youtube, Twitter and a dedicated blog. Finally there will be a workshop for staff from other UK country houses to share best practice developed at Cragside, Lotherton and Standen, as well as contributing their own ideas on how this shared enterprise can continue after the project is completed. With the broader support of the National Trust to take this scheme forward nationally, and Leeds Museums and Galleries to pursue the project locally, we will facilitate a permanent shift in the overall roles of country houses as educational spaces, enabling them to enhance both the public understanding of science, and to appreciate the social history of country houses far beyond their traditional aesthetic appeal. Moreover, by ensuring that young people are familiar early on with the deep interconnections between science, history and art, the project can counter the tendency for secondary education to see an unproductive gender split into sciences for boys and arts for girls.

When the original submission to the AHRB/C for the project 'Electrifying History' was made in 2005, we did not foresee and could not have foreseen the impact potential of that research endeavour for the educational activities of country houses that had been early users of electricity in the final decades of the nineteenth century. However, now that there is considerable interest in the country house sector to enhance their role in supporting the learning of science and technology through their historic collections, particularly as a result of changes to the national curriculum, this project to extend the impact of PI Gooday's historical research is very timely.

The main beneficiaries of this project will be:

a) Partner country house staff and volunteers:
i) they will be better informed about the electrical heritage of their respective properties and how this fits into the social history of electrification and the correlated evolution of electrical science and technology. They will accordingly produce enhanced resources for the properties to draw upon when engaging their visitors in stories drawn through academic research, but delivered in an accessible and tailored way.

ii) The project will highlight the ways in which country houses might be used by secondary schools not simply via the history curriculum but also via the science and design and technology curricula, emphasising the way such technologies both impact on and are integrated into our everyday lives; this could increase interest amongst prospective visitors via the project's online resources.

b) Visitors to partner country houses: these will benefit from having access to a new and different historical narrative, supported by up-to-date academic research; this will inform them about scientific and technological history, which is at present an under-represented aspect of country house interpretation.

c) Primary school pupils: they will be able to participate in workshops on the history of electricity in an exciting and interesting setting, and will thus learn not just about the scientific facts of electricity but also about how it impacted on different people's everyday lives. This fits well with the themed nature of the International Primary Curriculum used in 1300 schools in the UK. The project also aims to address the challenge of gender bias in subject choice that has been demonstrated to begin at primary level.

d) Primary school teachers: they will have downloadable, accessible and fit for purpose resources to draw on when teaching about electricity (as noted above) which will link into national curriculum requirements.

e) Local history groups: these will be able to learn about the responses of a broad range of the region's citizens to the history of the domestic uses of electricity, and the scientific issues associated with them.

f) Staff and visitors at non-partner country houses: in future more such houses will be able draw upon the outputs we create and develop similar activities or resources for themselves, developing a larger national network of resources that will long outlive this AHRC project.

Overall this project will enable country houses to enhance their traditional roles as repositories of art, culture and social history, by enabling them to become an integral resource in the national curriculum for science education. Accordingly this impact project has the potential to enhance the nation's wealth by facilitating greater engagement of the nation's school pupils - and country house visitors - with opportunities to understand, and in the longer term participate more comprehensively and vigorously in, the socially transformative potential of electrical science, power and technology.