I was very disappointed last March (2014) that I was unable to attend the ‘Home Atmospheres: Sensing and Feeling at Home Conference‘, organised by the Histories of Home Subject Specialist Network, held at the Geffrye Museum.
There were several papers (conference programme is here) that I really wanted to hear (and I’m sure I’d have especially enjoyed the candle-/fire-lit tour of the Almshouses!). But being keen to share research, the HHSSN recorded the papers, podcasts of which they’ve uploaded to their website, here.
Of relevance to this blog are the papers of Oliver Betts, ‘Cramped, dark and not for the kids: comparing visitor experience and lived reality in the slums of Victorian Britain’:
And Pauline Destree, ‘Noise and ‘dirty dirt’: negotiating the home on a council estate:
Barbara Wood’s paper, ‘Can historic houses feel like home? Less familiar case studies from the National Trust’:
And Rhiannon Goddard’s paper, ‘Can we recreate ‘atmosphere’ in the historic home?’:
would also have been useful, with regard to other work that I’m doing at the moment – phenomenological explorations of a lower middle class house in the East Midlands in the late 1902s – early 1930s, through archaeological investigations and reconstructions (Flickr album here; background information on the building here – if interested, further information can be found by searching for ‘Lymehurst’ on the ARCHAEOLOGY OF DOMESTIC LIFE IN EARLY 20TH CENTURY BRITAIN blog):
I’ve only just found these podcasts, so haven’t yet had chance to listen to them, but am certainly looking forward to doing so!
Notes of an Antiquary 