Thoughts on the V&A Public Country House Conference
Sarah Roller is the Policy and Education Manager for Historic Houses.
Connect with her @SarahRoller8
.
50 years on from the V&A’s landmark – and overtly political – Destruction of the Country House exhibition, the contemporary country house community gathered at the museum once again to discuss, debate and define the country house’s place in the national psyche. Funded through a British Academy fellowship, the conference was firmly focused on the public country house – and within this, primarily looking at houses in National Trust ownership.
Professor Louis P Nelson’s plenary address at the end of Day 1 was a provocation for the audience. Working at the University of Virginia – a site with intrinsic and immediate links to the trade and labour of enslaved people – Nelson spoke about reparative justice and the importance of reparative history for many American heritage sites, and the work being done by his own university to help bring the descendants of the enslaved people who built the site into institutional decision-making. Papers on the morning of day 2 from Brandon Dillard of Jefferson’s Monticello, and Laura Kilcer VanHuss and Elon Cook Lee from the US’ National Trust for Historic Preservation further highlighted how much further on our American counterparts are in their approach both to public history, but also to underpinning this with the concepts of reparative justice.
In some respects, the United States has it easier when it comes to addressing the horrors of the past, because of the immediacy of place in relation to these horrors and traumas. Slavery – and its immediate legacies – are something the US has had to grapple with intimately, and urgently. For the UK, a tiny island which once ruled over a quarter of the world’s population, there is less immediacy, less intimacy. Historical literacy, particularly surrounding the British Empire, is notoriously poor for the general population. Acts of violence, conquest and colonial oppression took place, for the most part, on shores far away from our small island: country houses were not the product of direct labour by an enslaved population – they were the by-product or the fruits of this labour, the power houses which attempted to cement those in the ‘grubby’ business of trade and exploitation as part of the political and social establishment.
Layla Khoo giving a paper on participatory contemporary art at Nunnington Hall
Mark Girouard’s description of country houses as ‘power houses’, expressions of domination and wealth, featured heavily across the two days: there is plenty to explore in the architecture of the country house, as well as the creation of wealth and the political and economic forces which facilitated their construction. But in a UK context, it is the collections within these spaces often have the most tangible, direct link to colonialism and empire, and this seems to be where it becomes hardest to tell stories. In a country house, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of stories waiting to be told: of individuals and families, servants and masters, stories of home and abroad, of domestic life and political machinations – the list goes on. How to tell a cohesive, coherent story of the people, whilst interweaving the colonial origins of objects within these is extremely tricky to get right. Some objects have direct, relevant, interesting links to the family’s imperial connections: but other stories of empire can risk feeling shoe-horned in by anxious curators, rather than being a core part of the broader histories being brought to life at a site. Perhaps what was highlighted by the notion of the ‘public’ country house, as opposed to the privately-owned country house – one still in private ownership, at least – is that the narratives in country houses in public/Trust ownership can feel confused or difficult to follow. Histories end up competing with each other for visitors’ attention, rather than complementing or enhancing other aspects of interpretation and curation.
Professor Kate Retford asked who the visitor is supposed to be at a public country house. In a country house in private ownership, a visitor is a ‘guest’ – they are being shown a space which is manifestly not theirs. In a public country house, are those who visit still made to feel like ‘guests’? And if so, why, given this space is supposed to be one which has ? Should visitors be perceived as tourists? Should they be made to feel comfortable in a space which was so often designed to be uncomfortable? Sophie Chessum and Annie Grey also both discussed the problem of the loaded term, ‘country house’ and the way it is represented in mainstream media. Country houses are not seen as sites to learn (in the same way a ‘castle’ might be seen as a purely historical place, for example), but places of leisure – to have a nice day out. Many visitors to come to them with pre-existing images and perceptions: how can these constructively be dismantled, challenged or looked at in-depth? Should, as Neil MacGregor posed, country houses try and be sites which improve the historical literacy of the general public? (Far from an easy task.) How do and should the National Trust’s audience evaluation, presented by Jo Killeya and Amanda Chinneck, shape this?
Ellen Brickley’s paper on Oldbridge House and the Battle of the Boyne site touched on this idea of purpose. Having recently been awarded €10 million from the Shared Island Initiative – designed to fund projects on the island of Ireland which aims to ‘enhance co-operation, connection and mutual understanding… and engage with all communities and traditions to build consensus around a shared future’, there is perhaps a sense of purpose or mission from this funding pot with a particular mission which helps bring sharp clarity to this particular OPW project. This mission statement is, of course, a result of the Good Friday agreement, and designed to help foster post-conflict community and cohesion, but there is something in it which seems pertinent to the broader discussions and themes of the conference as a whole. History, as we all know, can be used for a myriad different purposes: but perhaps our society most needs it to foster an understanding of how and why contemporary Britain is the way it is, is as good a starting point as any.
Image by Sarah Roller
A few take-aways, perhaps, that I think struck me in particular:
- If the National Trust really wishes country houses to be part of its mission to be ‘for everyone, for ever’, then there is huge amount of work to be done – and some of this will have to involve some radical rethinking of the way these spaces are used and the stories they tell.
- ‘Change is an intentional act’ – and ultimately, it can feel like a lot of excuses are being made as to why change isn’t happening. Change happens by getting on and doing things. Institutions can be big and unwieldy, but bureaucracy is often a convenient excuse to hide behind.
- Curation is one half of the issue, but interpretation is the other. Both are living disciplines: they need constant refreshing and re-assessing. If you’re relying on guides or volunteers to do the interpretation, then they need to be properly trained, monitored and appraised. ‘Professionalisation’ of FOH/visitor services/tour guiding is important – paid, well-trained, experienced professionals who are good at their job and who have a responsibility to take organisational direction in their content and delivery are going to do a better job (on the whole) than well-meaning volunteers who do not necessarily have the appropriate skills or knowledge to tackle complex or sensitive stories with nuance, nor the compulsion to follow direction in the same way.
- There has to be some soul-searching about what the role of the public country house is in contemporary Britain. Privately owned country houses have a more ‘traditional’ country house visitor set-up – and public country houses actually have an exciting opportunity to tell a really interesting mix of site-specific histories, from the hyper-local to the global, without the potential constraints that family history and legacy can bring. Institutions should do more to support curators to think outside of the box and go back to first principles when it comes to the country houses in their care.