C O N T E X T 1 7 3 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 2 23 DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION Alison Oram is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London and professor emerita at Leeds Beckett University. She has published widely on 20th century queer British history and on the representation of LGBTQ+ histories in heritage, especially historic houses. She led ‘Pride of Place: England’s LGBTQ+ heritage’ for Historic England in 2015–16. Her books include Her HusbandWas a Woman! Women’s gender-crossing and modern British popular culture (2007) and, with Matt Cook, Queer Beyond London (2022). Links Pride of Place: https://historicengland. org.uk/research/ inclusive-heritage/ lgbtq-heritage-project/ Map: www.historypin. org/en/prideofplace/ properties as having significant queer histories (clearly there are many more) and organised special interpretative strategies for them, as well as a new LGBTQ+ guidebook. One of these places was Kingston Lacy in Dorset. Its owner, William Bankes, had to flee the country in 1841 after being arrested for indecency with a soldier – which at the time could be a capital offence – but continued from his exile to have his house spectacularly renovated. In 2017 this aspect of the LGBTQ+ past was remembered in a powerful installation at Kingston Lacy of 51 knotted ropes suspended in the hallway, marking the lives of the 51 men who were hanged for sodomy during Bankes’ lifetime. Shibden Hall, near Halifax in West Yorkshire, exemplifies the development of queer heritage. Anne Lister (1791–1840), its most prominent owner, was an unmarried, socially ambitious and entrepreneurial woman, who inherited the estate from her uncle in 1826. From her teenage years onwards she had numerous same-sex relationships, eventually settling down in the 1830s with an heiress from a neighbouring estate, AnnWalker. Anne Lister’s sexuality came into public view through the work of the local historian Helena Whitbread, who first decoded and published extracts from Lister’s diaries in 1988. Owned and managed by the local authority since the 1930s, Shibden Hall is promoted as a public park and house museum. Anne Lister’s lesbianism has increasingly been flagged up since the 1990s. Anne Lister reconfigured the house and estate in the 1830s to assert her social status, bringing romantic landscaping to the grounds and building a fashionable rustic hut where she could pursue her courtship of Ann Walker in privacy. She refashioned the fairly modest manor house by installing a newVictorian, mock-Tudor fireplace and panelling in the main room. She invoked the gothic style by adding a gallery, creating the effect of an open medieval manor hall. This use of the gothic was echoed in a Norman tower for her library and the addition of Lister lions — the family symbol — carved in stone and wood. Anne Lister’s use of the neo-gothic and the recycling of other historical architectural forms means that Shibden can be placed into the queer architectural lineage of 18th and 19th century Britain, these styles often being associated with same-sex desires. A Shibden pamphlet dating from the 1970s described Anne Lister as ‘the most outstanding and remarkable member of her family’. At this point her sexuality was still obscured, although a few clues were available: ‘At a very early age she decided that she would not marry’. Like many historic houses, Shibden was promoted as a historic ‘family home’ offering a family day out. What the site actually does, however, is to reflect the history of the rather queer and nonnormative Lister family. It was not only Anne who pursued an atypical sexual and emotional life. The generations above and below her also married rarely or had few children. So Shibden demonstrates the fragility of the heterosexual family and points to the diverse family patterns of the past. This is particularly appropriate in a locality which includes the nearby towns of Hebden Bridge and Todmorden, both well known as having a high proportion of lesbian and gay couples and families since the 1980s. Shibden Hall now has an international queer following, too. The BBC TV hit drama Gentleman Jack, now in its second series, has made Shibden Hall and Halifax an astonishingly popular new site of queer pilgrimage, where visitors can follow in the footsteps of Anne Lister and visualise her queer past, no longer half hidden but a central part of local heritage tourism. Shibden Hall, near Halifax. The lesbianism of its most prominent owner, Anne Lister, has increasingly been flagged up. (Photo: Alison Oram)
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