Painting over the roses and castles
Painting over the roses and castles
The Industrial Revolution brought new and improved modes of travel to Victorian Britain. From these, new cultural and lived histories were formed. In 1850 persons and families ‘living aboard’ their working vessels up and down the country’s vast and intricate waterway system, were few in number and confined, in the main, to working males. By 1880 their presence had become commonplace.
Currently, the country is suffering its worst dystopian economic and (perhaps) social crisis since the pre-war years. Quite suddenly, public attention has been drawn to ‘live aboards’ who have returned to the waterways after some one hundred years’ absence. This has been brought about by the actions of ‘truth seeking’ by a regulatory agency anterior to the very communities they are said to serve.
There are more boats, and ‘live aboards’ on the inland waterways now than there were at the height of the industrial revolution. Their daily lives and identity formation are shot through with rhetoric of hierarchical authenticity that is, in the main, rooted on travel and movement. To be a ‘true boater’ you are a traveller; a ‘false boater’ is merely a tourist. Outside of their own micro-communities and in the public environment, they are marginalised and suffer a taxonomy grouping (traveller, gypsy, pirate, anarchist, etc.) that is not their truth, but the truth of false and lazy perspective.
This paper places the boating community of Great Britain at the centre of an academic discussion about truth, travel and perception at a time when their very way of life has come under the most significant overt threat in its two hundred and fifty year history. It is my hope that its writing and reception will inform and inspire culture writing and documentary facilitation at this crucial time.
Bargee Travellers, Cultural History, travel behaviour, Activism, Travel history
Millette, Holly-Gale
909906ff-426b-47ab-a71a-5788ea36c213
Millette, Holly-Gale
909906ff-426b-47ab-a71a-5788ea36c213
Millette, Holly-Gale
(2011)
Painting over the roses and castles.
Travel and Truth International Research Conference, Wolfson College, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
16 - 18 Sep 2011.
(Submitted)
Record type:
Conference or Workshop Item
(Paper)
Abstract
The Industrial Revolution brought new and improved modes of travel to Victorian Britain. From these, new cultural and lived histories were formed. In 1850 persons and families ‘living aboard’ their working vessels up and down the country’s vast and intricate waterway system, were few in number and confined, in the main, to working males. By 1880 their presence had become commonplace.
Currently, the country is suffering its worst dystopian economic and (perhaps) social crisis since the pre-war years. Quite suddenly, public attention has been drawn to ‘live aboards’ who have returned to the waterways after some one hundred years’ absence. This has been brought about by the actions of ‘truth seeking’ by a regulatory agency anterior to the very communities they are said to serve.
There are more boats, and ‘live aboards’ on the inland waterways now than there were at the height of the industrial revolution. Their daily lives and identity formation are shot through with rhetoric of hierarchical authenticity that is, in the main, rooted on travel and movement. To be a ‘true boater’ you are a traveller; a ‘false boater’ is merely a tourist. Outside of their own micro-communities and in the public environment, they are marginalised and suffer a taxonomy grouping (traveller, gypsy, pirate, anarchist, etc.) that is not their truth, but the truth of false and lazy perspective.
This paper places the boating community of Great Britain at the centre of an academic discussion about truth, travel and perception at a time when their very way of life has come under the most significant overt threat in its two hundred and fifty year history. It is my hope that its writing and reception will inform and inspire culture writing and documentary facilitation at this crucial time.
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Submitted date: 18 September 2011
Venue - Dates:
Travel and Truth International Research Conference, Wolfson College, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom, 2011-09-16 - 2011-09-18
Keywords:
Bargee Travellers, Cultural History, travel behaviour, Activism, Travel history
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Local EPrints ID: 467997
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/467997
PURE UUID: f43b9f5a-2b27-4a15-b332-3060dd74367d
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Date deposited: 27 Jul 2022 16:59
Last modified: 28 Jul 2022 01:46
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