A House Divided: Nostalgia and the Silencing of History in Britain

Since their initial transition from elite dwellings to national heritage sites, historic houses throughout the United Kingdom have resembled depictions of repackaged romanticism of empire while circumventing the impact of imperialism. Estate curatorial efforts of the eighteenth century were not transactional but a socio-cultural and political routine embodying a nostalgic longing for a romanticised past, seeking to present these houses as embodiments of British national heritage often filled with evidence of imperial pillaging. As the relationship with the evolving British public ebbed and flowed, curation of these quasi-domesticated spaces shifted as curators systematically removed personal discourse of vast wealth and the family’s history from interpretation, often avoiding overt links to acts of imperialism while maintaining a national nostalgic concentration. Further demonstrated by the eradication of a meta-narrative or focal point in which a tour is centred, substituting more general and often vague secondary depictions of the site’s owning family and historically significant collections. This representation is achieved by perpetuating an ambiguous narrative, an interpretive technique I term ‘strategic ambiguity’. Specifically, this practice refers to the narrative created by site administrators and maintained within the heritage sector whose function – at least in part – is to obscure, silence, and erase the histories of empire that underpin the social, economic, and political context of the historic house, perpetuating a form of imperial amnesia. Today, landmark houses remain contested terrain, traditionally tasked to represent a national narrative they often exemplify a nostalgic preservation of history in a ‘quintessentially British’ site while avoiding a tangible connection between imperialism and the subsequent prosperity of the British elite. Ultimately, this paper demonstrates that the early curation process, in conjunction with the site’s ability to spatially displace imperial history separate from that of the British nation, has created a nostalgic memorial landscape resistant to decolonial narratives.