About

This project aims to provide the first history of queer lives and experiences in rural England. Given the past criminalisation of male same sex relationships, and the stigma against female same sex relationships, recovering queer histories can be challenging. This is especially true of rural histories, as the countryside lacks the gay spaces and political organisations that have facilitated the recovery of an urban history of queer lives in England. This has meant that the history of queer people in England has been told from an almost exclusively urban perspective. We have little idea about how queer experiences in the countryside differed from the city, the spaces and structures that sustained queer rural lives and the ways in which queer people navigated their public and private lives in rural society.

Drawing on my experience as a Collections Researcher at the Museum of English Rural Life, where I co-created the exhibition Queer Constellations, which uncovered stories of LGBTQ+ people who lived in rural areas in the 19th and early 20th centuries, this project will explore a range of primary source material, including farm records, court records, genealogical and census data and life history sources. It will develop a methodology by which we can recover marginalised lives in the countryside and use the archival material to develop an understanding of queer experiences in rural England. Moreover, the study will explore how this methodology can enable rural museums and archival services to increase the visibility of LGBTQ+ histories and of other marginalised groups in rural Britain.