Can historic houses tell more stories than they have done?

Despite recent complaints that organisations such as the National Trust are ‘rewriting’ history, the real challenge is how historic properties can present a fuller and more complex account of the past

Writing in 1709, the playwrightturned-architect Sir John Vanbrugh observed the widespread enthusiasm for touring old buildings. Some sites were valued ‘for their magnificence, or curious workmanship; and others, as they move more lively and pleasing reflections (than history without their aid can do) on the persons who have inhabited them; on the remarkable things which have been transacted in them, or the extraordinary occasions of erecting them.’ Modern impulses for visiting such houses are even more varied: aesthetic wonder and selfimprovement mingle with voyeurism and escapism. Vanbrugh knew that historic housevisiting and storytelling have much in common. What is currently at stake is what those stories might be about.

With the recent publication of the National Trust’s interim report on connections between its places, colonialism and slavery, and in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement, discussion has focused on the urgency to include stories relating to people of colour. One might say that this is a timely emphasis but, considering that the built environment of Britain has been shaped by colonialism since the 16th century, it is in fact long overdue. Leafing through National Trust guidebooks from the 1970s and ’80s (until recently often the most up-to-date version available), it is notable that there was no reflection on, for example, Dyrham Park’s connections to colonialism over generations: William and George Wynter’s ownership of vessels used in slave-trading voyages in the 1560s; William Blathwayt’s colonial career which financed the updated house and park around 1700 (Fig. 1); and the fact that at the turn of the 19th century, the lady of the house was of mixed heritage, born illegitimately in Jamaica to a plantation owner.

Revealing uncomfortable origins is to appreciate the intricacy of places that have been shaped by complex and sometimes compromised individuals, and to acknowledge the web of exchange and exploitation that connects us all. Moreover, overlooking certain stories has played an active role in marginalising particular groups in the wider world. If we want an equitable society, we must redress this.

The traditional historic house, the stately home, embodies a way of life that hangs by a thread (some might say rightly so) but, despite their association with private wealth and privilege, houses held by the National Trust, English Heritage and other charities, and arguably even those still in private hands, are shared national assets. Visiting these places is a way of exercising that wider cultural ownership – and if we believe that these places are worth preserving at all, we need as diverse a range of people as possible to participate.

Narratives focusing on under-represented groups have been championed through initiatives such as Accentuate’s ‘History of Place’ project on D/deaf and disabled people’s heritage, and the National Trust’s ‘Prejudice and Pride’ project to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act and its partial decriminalisation of male homosexuality in England. The definition of a ‘historic house’ has also widened considerably, from the National Trust’s acquisition in 2010 of 575 Wandsworth Road, London, the home created by Khadambi Asalache (1935–2006), the Kenyan-born poet, novelist, philosopher of mathematics and British civil servant, to the independent project to save and give public access to 186 Gwydir Street, Cambridge, former home of the artisan decorator David Parr.

It is therefore both possible and positively desirable that historic houses should tell more stories – not only more in number, but more complicated in nature. Searching for these stories should be a collaboration and those of us who have hitherto enjoyed the security of representation must exercise humility to allow that our own narrative may not be the most important at all times or in all places. With a proliferation of stories, of course, comes the challenge of prioritisation and of presentation. The solution lies in holding multiple truths in tension. Only in that way can we respect both the historic and the human.