"Keeping Your Shape": Preserving English football heritage Keith Emerick, Inspector of Ancient Monuments
Event details
IPUP Seminar
Bootham Crescent has been home to York City FC since 1932 but the Club has now moved to the new LNER Community Stadium at Monk’s Cross. The old ground will be redeveloped for housing.
The last 30 years have witnessed the demolition, redevelopment and relocation of many football grounds: they have disappeared below housing estates, supermarkets and retail parks, often without a trace or nod of recognition to their history and heritage. Yet football grounds are keenly valued as cherished places and repositories of memory, conveying intense senses of identity and belonging with the power to stir hearts and minds and evoke strong and enduring social responses. This is especially true when grounds are relocated and the fan base is dislocated.
The seminar will look at the Historic England recording project at Bootham Crescent, undertaken with the club and fanbase. The project offered the opportunity to create a better and more distinctive place before the new housing was designed, by testing imaginative ways of involving people for whom the ground holds great meaning and by exploring why they value the site and how they would like to see those memories and meanings celebrated.
About the speaker
Dr Keith Emerick is Inspector of Ancient Monuments for Historic England in York and North Yorkshire. He is also a Research Associate at the University of York.
This talk is part of the IPUP Seminar programme, a series of talks on public history and heritage in all its forms. All are welcome. This seminar will be hosted on Zoom and a link will be circulated to ticket holders 48 hours prior to the start time.