Fighting for the Victorian Toilets

David Howell (University of Wales, Newport) The campaign to save the Hayes Island Victorian toilets is ongoing, and anyone wishing to support the campaign is encouraged to add their names to the petition at: https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/cardiff-council-to-save-the-hayes-victorian-toilets The historic landscape is a finite resource. While the British conservation and restoration community has become particularly adept at adapting the built landscape for contemporary needs and demands, once an element of the historic landscape is changed, or lost entirely, it cannot return (or be

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Living in the Past: Exploring Everyday Life during and after the Victorian Period in an East Midlands Industrial Town

Introduction ‘Living in the Past’ (hereafter LIP) is a voluntary community archaeology project that aims to investigate everyday life in and around Derby (fig. 1) during and after the Victorian period, by testing the potential of two largely untapped resources. The first consists of buildings originally constructed to house industrial workers during the in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (and earlier buildings predominantly occupied by working-class families and individuals during this time). Both standing buildings and the plots

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Shooting the Victorians – Kate Colquhoun

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eBJjvbGukE[/youtube] “I think what is interesting to me is being able to communicate history in an extremely rigorous and scholarly way – never making stuff up, never leaving any stone unturned, never refusing to question what needs to be questioned – endlessly, in fact – but there is nothing wrong, in fact there is everything right in my mind, in being able to communicate that in the most compulsive and seductive way possible. To make history alive.” – Kate Colquhoun

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Dressing up: It’s fun but is it REAL history?

By David Hearn (Independent Scholar) Dressing up as a soldier of The Diehard Company or brave Victorian Bluejacket might be a fun way to spend a day but is it actually “history”? Does the authenticity of the costume being worn matter? How can trudging around a field at a county show or showing visitors around a stately home advance the study of history one single step? Of course none of these questions are ones that should be put to the

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