Researchers from Queen’s University are part of a team that has secured £1.48m from the UKRI’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for a public history project to re-examine two of Ulster’s historic houses, Clandeboye and Mount Stewart.

The project, ‘Historic Houses, Global Crossroads’, will explore their histories as both local “big houses” and significant players within the British empire and examine how some of the collections they hold (objects, furniture, libraries, plants etc.)  connect them to communities globally and locally.

Through a number of public events, the project will examine how these might provide spaces to examine identity and belonging both for Northern Ireland’s diverse communities, including traditional and global majority communities, and recent migrants from around the globe.

The research team from Queen’s, led by Professor Olwen Purdue, Dr Emma Reisz and Dr Briony Widdis from the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics, are collaborating with researchers from the Universities of Birmingham, Newcastle, Toronto and Singapore, with the National Trust NI and the Dufferin Foundation at Clandeboye.

ArtsEkta will collaborate with the  international research team to support a creative residency programme that responds to these historic properties as inclusive global crossroads, transforming them into spaces of shared heritage and understanding for a diverse and sustainable future.

Professor Purdue, Director of the Centre for Public History at Queen’s said: “The Centre for Public History is delighted to be leading on the engaged research aspect of this exciting project. We are working with Clandeboye, Mount Stewart and several community partners to examine how these significant historic houses might be re-imagined as spaces in which to explore the complexities of history, identity and belonging in Northern Ireland, looking at their significance for communities both locally and globally through their historic connections to empire.”

The researchers will examine libraries, artefacts and gardens in both houses to explain how their make-up is connected both to the history of Ulster and the British empire and to explore the complexities of identity in Northern Ireland. While both houses were constructed by and owned by unionists, they also drew strongly on Irish and Celtic symbols to create their identity. A series of public events will draw on this to explore what it means to be Irish/British/Northern Irish today.

They also contain numerous artefacts and materials from across the empire that connect them to communities globally. The project will therefore involve more recent arrivals to Northern Ireland, such as Indian and other Asian communities, to help explain the significance of artefacts in both houses from the days of empire.

Dr Reisz commented: “Mount Stewart and Clandeboye materialise networks of connections that link the people and places of Northern Ireland to the wider world, and they can be gateways to Northern Ireland’s global history. In my work on this project, I will be focusing on the collections of objects at these two estates, exploring what these objects have meant and continue to mean to people in their places of origin as well as here in Northern Ireland. My research will also explore the remarkable Dufferin photographic collection. This is a unique visual record of the imperially and globally connected lives of a Northern Irish family, and of the people and places that influenced them and which they influenced.”

Dr Widdis added: “Clandeboye and Mount Stewart hold biographical collections of individuals in two closely connected families who shaped Northern Ireland’s landscapes as we know them today, and whose extraordinary influence transformed Ireland, Britain and the world, especially in South Asia and Canada. In my research, I will explore how the material culture of these estates can be used to explore both global and local identities, collaborating with communities to develop these historic houses as crossroads for connection.”

The project is funded by the UKRI’s AHRC and will run for three years, commencing in November 2024.

For more information, please visit: https://treatiedspaces.com/historic-houses-global-crossroads/