Placement at National Trust

By Ayesha Keshani, Goldsmiths, University of London

The Horse Power placement with the National Trust has been an unexpected diversion in my PhD journey. It seemed a little too good to be true – working with a major institution to examine multispecies relations through British and Irish history.

The placement involved creating a Research Toolkit for Horse Power, a project focusing on horse histories as told through the NT’s collections, archives and properties. Recruited through the University of Oxford’s National Trust Partnership, we worked as a team of four PhD students from three universities (and four different disciplines), to conduct research and case studies, which will be used to underpin future curatorial projects at the NT. While mostly desk-based, it involved deep dives into the archives and collection, liaising with NT curators and librarians, and site visits to properties across the country. The highlight was a (very early) morning spent meeting the working Shire Horses at Operation Centaur, who are involved in conservation management of meadows and woodlands at London NT sites.

Horses are fabulous creatures to story-tell with. They also open the door to examining minoritised histories, and understanding the roles of gender, class, race and colonialism as they intersect with historic horse practices across all sectors of society. Within the NT’s archives and properties, the sheer scale of horse-related material brought to light fascinating stories hidden beneath the dominant narratives of elite horsemanship. Amongst our research strands we highlighted the lives of accomplished female riders and the specialised knowledge of horse workers such as grooms, stablehands and coachmen. Other chapters examine folk traditions, and early forms of horse care and medicine, as well as transnational exchanges in prized horses and horse-knowledge that took place between the Ottoman Empire and Britain, and the sheer numbers of working animals lost in colonial and world wars. The collections of horse-related material at sites like Calke Abbey span everything from stable doors still etched with the names of famous racehorse occupants, to the tail of a beloved pet pony. Through these archival traces, we catch a glimpse of the lives of the horses themselves. The new interpretation at Roundhouse Birmingham for example, commemorates individual horses and workers employed onsite by Birmingham Corporation, from nightsoil (human excrement) horse and carts, to the barge horses who worked the nineteenth century canals.

It was a timely distraction from my own PhD research into Malaysian zoology exhibitions, but found common ground in terms of how landscapes and economies have transformed – and been transformed by – human-nonhuman labour and relations, as well as how nonhuman animals have been represented through public institutions. Making sense of the vast collection databases and learning how to trace horse histories through them, was a steep learning curve, and it quickly became apparent that we could only scratch the surface of such a huge subject area. The placement gave me a sense of the scale of the National Trust, and the myriad forms of archival and curatorial practices within it. Working collaboratively with PhD researchers from other disciplines was eye-opening, resulting in a team that encompassed a wide variety of skills, specialisms and research interests. We hosted a workshop to introduce some of our findings to NT staff in September 2022 (with a second scheduled for April 2023), and it will be exciting to see how the project develops in future.