Historic Houses Global Crossroads: Revisioning Two Northern Ireland Historic Houses and Estates

Funder: Arts and Humanities Research Council of the United Kingdom, Standard Research Grant AH/Z506436/1 (£1,497,041), 2024-27

Team: PL Joy Porter (University of Birmingham), PcL Olwen Purdue (Queen’s University Belfast), PcL Charles Prior (University of Birmingham), PcL Julieanne McMahon-Grier (National Trust), PcL Maitrii Aung-Thwin (National University of Singapore), PcL Annie Tindley, PcL (Newcastle University) Emma Reisz (Queen’s University Belfast), PcL Mark McGowan (University of Toronto), RIA Briony Widdis (Queen’s University Belfast)

Project Partners: Clandeboye Estate, Northern Ireland Forest Schools Association, Photo Museum Ireland, ArtsEkta, Canada Ireland Foundation, Prospect Burma, Professor Stephane Hess

Historic properties and their environments face acute challenges from climate change and a diversity deficit linked to the perception they embody only empire and exploitation. Without diminishing these histories, the Historic Houses Global Crossroads project is revealing how historic sites can beneficially position themselves in a new way, as global crossroads, entangled intersections of diplomatic, material and intercultural exchange. Setting aside both methodological nationalism and a conventional family-owner focus, we are foregrounding global interconnections between people, environments, material culture, and ideas.

Our research concentrates on two of Northern Ireland’s most globally significant yet under-analysed heritage sites – Clandeboye Estate, containing exceptional extensive unstudied archives and material culture, and Mount Stewart, amongst the National Trust’s most interculturally rich spaces. We are addressing the urgent social challenge of ensuring they serve as transformative sites of inclusion, rather than division. This work has vital significance in the contested political context of Northern Ireland where historic houses are embedded in a long history of empire, internal colonialism and sectarian division. We are deepening and profoundly broadening understanding of both sites, revealing for the first time the textured flows of global interconnection they embody.