Beloved Exhibition Launch Event and Symposium

This is a day event celebrating the launch of the exhibition Beloved: Crafting Intimacies with the Ladies of Llangollen created by Manchester-based artist Sarah-Joy Ford after a period of artist residency at Plas Newydd Historic House and Gardens in Llangollen. The site specific embroidered intervention is inspired by the deep and lifelong intimate relationship between the Ladies of Llangollen and the extraordinary home that they created together, as well as Sarah Ponsonby’s own creative practices undertaken in the home.

The day will include a symposium hosted by 'Queer Research Network Manchester ' with three speakers at The Hand Hotel, a visit to St Collen’s Church where Eleanor Butler, Sarah Ponsonby and Mary Carryl are buried and a private view of the exhibition with drinks reception at Plas Newydd Historic House and Gardens.

The Queer Research Network Manchester is an interdisciplinary research network that aims to bring together researchers working with queer themes across the Manchester universities. We host regular discussion and reading groups for PhD students and organise bi-monthly events and speakers.

This project is funded by the North West Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership through their Researcher-Led Knowledge Exchange scheme, with support from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Timetable of Events

Date: 30th April 2022

Beloved Symposium: Talks from Professor Alison Oram, Dr Freya Growley, Sarah-Joy Ford and performances from Jane Hoy of Queer Tales from Wales

Time: 2-4pm

Location: The Hand Hotel, Bridge St, Llangollen LL20 8PL

Guided Visit to the grave of Eleanor Butler, Sarah Ponsonby and Mary Caryl

Time: 4.30pm - 5pm

Location: St Collen’s Church, 8 Church St, Llangollen LL20 8HU

Comfort Break

Time 5pm - 6.30pm

Exhibition Private View and Drinks Reception

Time: 6.30pm - 9.30pm

Location: Plas Newydd Historic House and Gardens, Hill St, Llangollen LL20 8AW

An Exhibition of New Quilted artworks at Plas Newydd by Sarah-Joy Ford

Beloved: Crafting Intimacies with the Ladies of Llangollen

Delight of my heart, My sweet love, My Beloved, My B

This exhibition presents a site-specific installation of quilted and textile artworks created by Manchester-based artist Sarah-Joy Ford after a period of artist residency at Plas Newydd Historic House and Gardens in Llangollen. The embroidered intervention is inspired by the deep and lifelong intimate relationship between the Ladies of Llangollen and the extraordinary home that they created together.

Plas Newydd was home to Lady Eleanor Butler (1739–1829) and Sarah Ponsonby (1755–1831), who captured the imagination of Regency society when they eloped from their families in Ireland to begin a life of exquisite retirement together, escaping the confines of their gendered fates of marriage and the convent. After a tour of Wales, – they chose to settle on the outskirts of Llangollen, in the small cottage they christened Plas Newydd in 1780. Here they lived together as life partners, with their maid and friend Mary Carryl who helped them escape from Ireland and create their extraordinary rural domesticity, including caring for a kitchen garden and a myriad of animals, among which including a dog called Sapho.

Over the years, they transformed Plas Newydd into a Gothic fantasy of patchwork stained glass and elaborately carved oak. This beloved cottage orne, situated within the picturesque landscape of North Wales attracted a stream of visitors including Anna Seward, Caroline Princess of Wales, Dorothy and William Wordsworth and the lesbian industrialist Anne Lister.

The exhibition will be the first of its kind to make an intervention into the house through a radical re-designing of the domestic textiles of the home including quilts, cushions and curtains. The techniques used to create the new artworks directly reference Sarah Ponsonby’s own creative practice which included sketching, watercolour painting and embroidery. Through a combination of handcraft and digital techniques Sarah’s artistic legacy is woven back into the fabric of the house.

The new works are a loving intervention, and embroidered embellishment of this extraordinary tale of women who lived, and loved, differently despite enormous societal restrictions.

About the Artist

Sarah-Joy Ford is an Artist and Researcher based at Manchester School of Art at Manchester Metropolitan University working with textiles to explore the complexities and pleasures of queer communities, histories, and archives. Her practice sits at the intersection of digital and traditional: using strategies of quilting, digital embroidery, digital print, applique and hand embellishment. Recent exhibitions include Archives and Amazons, HOME (Manchester) and Oranges are not the Only Fruit, Accrington Library (The British Textile Biennale) and Rebel Dykes Art and Archive Exhibition, Space Station 65. Her work has been commissioned by Artichoke Productions, The Pitt Rivers Museum, The Civic and Superbia. Her AHRC funded PhD research explores quilt making as an affective methodology for making re-visioning lesbian archival material.

You can find out more about the artist here on her website: http://sarahjoyford.com and follow her on instagram @sarahjoy.ford

Beloved Symposium Programme

During this event you will hear three perspectives on Plas Newydd House and the histories of the Ladies of Llangollen from the artist Sarah-Joy Ford, Professor Alison Oram, Dr Freya Growley and Jane Hoy of Queer Tales from Wales. There will be an opportunity to ask questions of all three panellists during the Q&A.

Queer Tales from Wales

Throughout the afternoon, Jane Hoy of Queer Tales from Wales will be presenting extracts from her play An Extraordinary Female Affection: The life and love of the Ladies of Llangollen. In 2021 this was shown to great acclaim as a promenade performance at Plas Newydd, performed by Jane and her partner Helen. QTW tour widely in England and Wales with shows about queer people in Welsh History. They are also organisers of Aberration, delivering lively cultural events in Aberystwyth, mid Wales, including LGBTQ History Month.

For a glimpse of the Ladies around their house and neighbourhood: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvGc34muQ1w

www.aberration.org.uk/queer-tales-from-wales

www.Canalrivertrust.org.uk

Sarah-Joy Ford: Beloved: Crafting Intimacies with the Ladies of Llangollen

Sarah-Joy Ford will talk about the process of creating the Beloved Exhibition at Plas Newydd, with a particular focus on her interest in the bedrooms of the household, Sarah Ponsonby’s creative practices undertaken in the home and the politics of naming.

The site-specific installation draws attention to the bedrooms of the house as the most intimate of spaces where the ladies shared a bed, read to one another and tended to each other’s ailments. Meanwhile upstairs, Mary Carryl took the attic bedroom with the patchwork windows and the state bedroom was reserved for treasured guests. At the heart of the exhibition is a quilt, created posthumously for the ladies’ bed with a newly created coat of arms designed to represent both Butler and Ponsonby, inspired by Sarah’s own sketch book of heraldry held at the National Library of Wales. This act of symbolic coupling is a conscious extension of the ladies' own delight in entwining their names together at the bottom of letters, carved over the fireplace and etched in stone on the ancient font down in the dell.

The techniques used to create the new artworks directly reference Sarah Ponsonby’s own creative practice which included sketching, watercolour painting and embroidery. Through a combination of handcraft and digital techniques Sarah’s artistic legacy is woven back into the fabric of the house. The new works are a loving intervention, and embroidered embellishment of this extraordinary tale of women who lived, and loved differently despite enormous societal restrictions.

Biographical Note

Sarah-Joy Ford is an Artist and Researcher working with textiles to explore the complexities and pleasures of queer communities, histories, and archives. Her practice sits at the intersection of digital and traditional: using strategies of quilting, digital embroidery, digital print, applique and hand embellishment. Recent exhibitions include Archives and Amazons, HOME (Manchester) and Oranges are not the Only Fruit, Accrington Library (The British Textile Biennale) and Rebel Dykes Art and Archive Exhibition, Space Station 65. Her work has been commissioned by Artichoke Productions, The Pitt Rivers Museum, The Civic and Superbia. Her AHRC funded PhD research explores quilt making as an affective methodology for making re-visioning lesbian archival material.

You can find out more about the artist here on her website: http://sarahjoyford.com and follow her on instagram @sarahjoy.ford

Professor Alison Oram: Ghosts of the Queer Past: Pilgrimage and the Ladies of Llangollen

Particular country houses have long been associated with prominent figures who have also been claimed for queer history. Plas Newydd, Llangollen, the home of the Ladies of Llangollen until 1832, for example, drew admiring and fascinated visitors during the Ladies’ own lifetimes and since, at least some of whom were keen to replicate or fantasise about their own version of a successful same-sex relationship.

An early pilgrim to Plas Newydd was Anne Lister in 1822, who later became a lesbian icon herself. In the 1930s, a suffragist woman doctor was inspired to write a biography of the Ladies after meeting their ghosts in their old home, while 1960s lesbian visitors continued to visit and ‘pay silent homage’ despite the neglected appearance of the house.

For historians, the ghostly presence of the past and its uses in the present day raises the question of our identification with the past as being similar to today versus its profound unknowability; a debate which is particularly pertinent for popular and public history.

Biographical Note

Alison Oram is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London and Professor Emerita at Leeds Beckett University. She has published widely on 20th century queer British history and on the representation of LGBTQ histories in heritage, especially historic houses. She led “Pride of Place: England’s LGBTQ Heritage” for Historic England in 2015-16. https://historicengland.org.uk/research/inclusive-heritage/lgbtq-heritage-project/

Her next book is Queer Beyond London (MUP: 2022), with Matt Cook. http://queerbeyondlondon.com/

Dr Freya Gowrley: A little temple, consecrate to Friendship and the Muses’: Romantic friendship and gift-exchange at Plas Newydd

On 17 November 1795, the poet Anna Seward wrote to her friend Mrs Mary Powys recounting a recent visit to her new friends, Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, the ‘celebrated Recluses of Llangollen Vale’. In the letter, Seward aptly described the home where they established residence, Plas Newydd, or ‘New Place’, located in Llangollen, North Wales, as ‘a little temple, consecrate to Friendship and the Muses, and adorned by the hands of all the Graces’. Seward’s identification of the house as a shrine to friendship was typical of contemporary responses to Plas Newydd, many of which directly associated the cottage’s material decoration with the intense relationship enjoyed by the two women and their broader circle of friends. Looking beyond the confines of Butler and Ponsonby’s own attachment, this paper examines their gift-exchange with this broader circle of acquaintances, arguing that it potently demonstrates their cultivation of relationships with a broad array of correspondents, whose exchange of gifts correspondingly created a material, affective, and ideological dialogue between forms of cultural expression.

Biographical Note

Dr Freya Gowrley is Lecturer in History of Art & Liberal Arts at the University of Bristol. Her research examines visual and material culture in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain and North America, focusing on the sites of the home, the collaged object, and the body. Her work appears in Word & Image, British Art Studies, the Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Journal 18, and Eighteenth-Century Fiction, among other outlets. She has held short-term research fellowships at institutions including Yale Center for British Art, the Winterthur Museum, the Huntington Library, the Harry Ransom Center, the University of St Andrews, and the Library Company of Philadelphia. Her monograph Domestic Space in Britain, 1750-1840: Materiality, Sociability and Emotion was recently published by Bloomsbury.

Guided Visit to the grave of Eleanor Butler, Sarah Ponsonby and Mary Caryl

The tour will be led by Sue Evans: a local archaeologist with an interest in all things churchy.

This will be accompanied by another performance from Queer Tales from Wales, that will bring to life the voice of Mary Gordon.

Funding

The project is supported by Plas Newydd Historic House and Gardens, Clwydian Range and Dee Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

The practice based research project is funded by the North West Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership through their Researcher-Led Knowledge Exchange scheme placement scheme, with support from which is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

You can view the case study and more about information on the project on the NWCDTP website here: https://www.nwcdtp.ac.uk/partners/plas-newydd/

Digwyddiad Lansio Arddangosfa Annwyl a Symposiwm

Dyma ddigwyddiad undydd gan Rwydwaith Ymchwil Cwiar Manceinion i ddathlu lansiad arddangosfa Annwyl: Creu Agosatrwydd â Merched Llangollen sydd wedi’i chreu gan yr artist Sarah-Joy Ford o Fanceinion ar ôl cyfnod preswyl yn Nhŷ a Gerddi Hanesyddol Plas Newydd. Mae’r ymyrraeth frodwaith safle-benodol hon wedi’i hysbrydoli gan y berthynas agos ddofn a gydol oes rhwng Merched Llangollen a’r cartref hynod y bu iddyn nhw ei greu gyda’i gilydd, yn ogystal ag arferion creadigol Sarah Ponsonby ei hun.

Bydd y diwrnod yn cynnwys symposiwm gyda thri siaradwr gwadd yng Ngwesty’r Hand, ymweliad ag Eglwys Sant Collen lle claddwyd Eleanor Butler, Sarah Ponsonby a Mary Caryl a chyfle arbennig i weld yr arddangosfa a mwynhau derbyniad â diodydd yn Nhŷ a Gerddi Hanesyddol Plas Newydd.

Mae Rhwydwaith Ymchwil Cwiar Manceinion yn rhwydwaith ymchwil rhyngddisgyblaethol sy’n ceisio dod ag ymchwilwyr sy’n gweithio ar themâu cwiar at ei gilydd ar draws prifysgolion Manceinion. Rydym ni’n cynnal grwpiau trafod a darllen rheolaidd ar gyfer myfyrwyr PhD ac yn trefnu digwyddiadau a siaradwyr gwadd bob dau fis.

Amserlen y Digwyddiad

Dyddiad: 30 Ebrill 2022

Symposiwm Annwyl: Sgwrs gan yr Athro Alison Oram, Dr Freya Growley a Sarah-Joy Ford

Amser: 2-4pmLleoliad: Gwesty’r Hand, Stryd y Bont, Llangollen LL20 8PL

Taith dywys at fedd Eleanor Butler, Sarah Ponsonby a Mary Caryl

Amser: 4-5pmLleoliad: Eglwys Sant Collen, 8 Stryd yr Eglwys, Llangollen LL20 8HU

Egwyl

Amser: 5-6.30pm

Cyfle arbennig i weld yr Arddangosfa a Derbyniad â Diodydd

Amser: 6.30-10pmLleoliad: Tŷ a Gerddi Hanesyddol Plas Newydd, Heol y Bryn, Llangollen, LL20 8AW

Rhaglen Symposiwm Annwyl

Yn ystod y digwyddiad hwn byddwch yn clywed tri safbwynt am Blas Newydd a hanes Merched Llangollen gan yr artist Sarah-Joy Ford, yr Athro Alison Oram a Dr Freya Growley. Mi fydd yna gyfle i ofyn cwestiynau i’r tri siaradwr yn ystod sesiwn holi ac ateb.

Sarah-Joy Ford: Annwyl: Creu Agosatrwydd â Merched Llangollen

Bydd Sarah-Joy Ford yn siarad am y broses o greu’r arddangosfa Annwyl ym Mhlas Newydd, gan roi sylw penodol i’w diddordeb yn yr ystafelloedd gwely, arferion creadigol Sarah Ponsonby a gwleidyddiaeth enwi.

Mae’r gosodiad safle-benodol yn tynnu sylw at ystafelloedd gwely’r tŷ fel y gofodau mwyaf personol lle’r oedd y merched yn rhannu gwely, yn darllen i’w gilydd ac yn gofalu am ei gilydd. Roedd ystafell wely Mary Caryl yn yr atig, gyda ffenestri clytwaith, ac roedd yr ystafell wely fawreddog yn cael ei chadw ar gyfer gwesteion arbennig. Wrth wraidd yr arddangosfa mae cwilt, wedi’i greu ar ôl marwolaeth ar gyfer gwely’r merched, gydag arfbais newydd wedi’i ddylunio i gynrychioli Eleanor a Sarah ac wedi’i ysbrydoli gan lyfr braslunio Sarah o herodraeth sydd ar gael a chadw yn Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru. Mae’r weithred hon o gysylltiad symbolaidd yn estyniad ymwybodol o foddhad y merched wrth blethu eu henwau gyda’i gilydd ar waelod llythyrau, a cherfio eu henwau ar y lle tân ac ar y bedyddfaen yn y glyn.

Mae’r technegau sydd wedi’u defnyddio i greu’r gweithiau celf newydd yn cyfeirio’n uniongyrchol at arferion creadigol Sarah Ponsonby, a oedd yn cynnwys peintio dyfrlliw a brodwaith. Drwy gyfuniad o grefft llaw a thechnegau digidol, mae etifeddiaeth artistig Sarah wedi’i blethu’n ôl i adeiladwaith y tŷ. Mae’r gweithiau newydd yn ymyrraeth gariadus ac yn addurniad brodwaith o hanes rhyfeddol y merched a fu’n byw ac yn caru’n wahanol er gwaethaf cyfyngiadau anferth eu cymdeithas.

Nodyn Bywgraffiadol

Mae Sarah-Joy Ford yn artist ac yn ymchwilydd sy’n gweithio gyda thecstilau i archwilio cymhlethdodau a phleserau cymunedau, hanes ac archifau cwiar. Mae ei harferion yn gorwedd ar y groesffordd rhwng y digidol a’r traddodiadol: yn defnyddio strategaethau cwiltio, brodwaith digidol, argraffu digidol, appliqué ac addurniadau â llaw. Mae ei harddangosfeydd diweddar yn cynnwys Archives and Amazons (Manceinion) ac Oranges are not the Only Fruit, Llyfrgell Accrington (Arddangosfa Eilflwydd Tecstilau Prydain) ac arddangosfa Rebel Dykes, Space Station 65. Mae ei gwaith wedi’i gomisiynu gan Artichoke Productions, The Pitt Rivers Museum, The Civic a Superbia. Mae ei hymchwil PhD dan nawdd AHRC yn archwilio cwiltio fel dull affeithiol i greu deunydd archifol lesbiaidd wedi’i ail ddychmygu.

Gallwch ddysgu mwy am yr artist ar ei gwefan: http://sarahjoyford.com a’i dilyn ar Instagram @sarahjoy.ford

Yr Athro Alison Oram: Ysbrydion y Gorffennol Cwiar: Pererinion a Merched Llangollen

Mae gan dai gwledig penodol gysylltiad hir ag unigolion blaenllaw sydd hefyd yn amlwg mewn hanes cwiar. Yn ystod oes y merched, a byth ers hynny, roedd Plas Newydd, cartref Merched Llangollen tan 1832, yn denu ymwelwyr llawn edmygedd a diddordeb ac roedd rhai ohonyn nhw’n awyddus i ailadrodd neu freuddwydio am eu fersiwn nhw eu hunain o berthynas gyda rhywun o'r un rhyw.

Un o bererinion cyntaf Plas Newydd oedd Anne Lister yn 1822, a ddaeth yn eicon lesbiaidd ei hun yn ddiweddarach. Yn y 1930au ysbrydolwyd doctor benywaidd a swffragydd i ysgrifennu bywgraffiad o’r merched ar ôl cwrdd â’u hysbrydion yn eu hen gartref, ac roedd ymwelwyr lesbiaidd yn dal yn ymweld â Phlas Newydd yn y 1960au i ‘dalu teyrnged dawel’ er gwaethaf cyflwr truenus yr adeilad.

I haneswyr, mae presenoldeb ysbrydol y gorffennol a’i ddefnydd yn y presennol yn gofyn cwestiynau am ein huniaethiad ni â’r gorffennol o ran ei debygrwydd â’r oes sydd ohoni yn erbyn ei ddirgelwch dwfn; dadl sydd wedi bod yn berthnasol iawn i hanes poblogaidd a chyhoeddus.

Nodyn Bywgraffiadol

Mae Alison Oram yn Uwch Gymrawd Ymchwil yn Sefydliad Ymchwil Hanesyddol Prifysgol Llundain ac yn Athro Emerita ym Mhrifysgol Beckett Leeds. Mae hi wedi cyhoeddi llawer o waith ar hanes cwiar Prydain yn yr ugeinfed ganrif ac ar hanes LHDTC+ mewn treftadaeth, yn arbennig tai hanesyddol. Yn 2015/16 arweiniodd ‘Pride of Place: England’s LGBTQ Heritage” ar gyfer Historic England. https://historicengland.org.uk/research/inclusive-heritage/lgbtq-heritage-project/

Ei llyfr diweddaraf yw Queer Beyond London (MUP: 2022), gyda Matt Cook. http://queerbeyondlondon.com/

Dr Freya Gowrley: A little temple, consecrate to Friendship and the Muses’: Romantic friendship and gift-exchange at Plas Newydd

Ar 17 Tachwedd 1795 ysgrifennodd y bardd Anna Seward at ei ffrind Mary Powys yn sôn am ei hymweliad diweddar â’i chyfeillion newydd, y Fonesig Eleanor Butler a Sarah Ponsonby, neu’r ‘celebrated Recluses of Langollen Vale’. Yn ei llythyr mae Anna Seward yn disgrifio cartref y merched ym Mhlas Newydd fel teml fechan sydd wedi’i chysegru i gyfeillgarwch a’r awenau ac wedi’i haddurno o wirfodd calon. Roedd disgrifiad y bardd o’r tŷ fel cysegrfa i gyfeillgarwch yn ymateb cyfoes nodweddiadol i Blas Newydd, ac roedd llawer o bobl yn cysylltu addurniadau’r bwthyn gyda’r berthynas ddwys yr oedd y ddwy ferch, a’u cylch ehangach o ffrindiau, yn ei fwynhau. Gan edrych y tu hwnt i ffiniau ymlyniad Eleanor a Sarah, mae’r papur hwn yn archwilio’r anrhegion yr oedden nhw’n eu cyfnewid gyda’u cylch ehangach o ffrindiau, gan ddadlau ei fod yn arddangos eu meithriniad o berthnasoedd gydag ystod eang o ohebwyr a’r anrhegion yn creu dialog materol, affeithiol ac ideolegol rhwng ffurfiau gwahanol ar fynegiant diwylliannol.

Nodyn Bywgraffiadol

Mae Dr Freya Gowrley yn ddarlithydd Hanes Celf a Chelfyddydau Breiniol ym Mhrifysgol Bryste. Mae ei hymchwil yn archwilio diwylliant gweledol a materol ym Mhrydain a Gogledd America yn y ddeunawfed a’r bedwaredd ganrif ar bymtheg, gan ganolbwyntio ar leoliadau’r cartref, y gwrthrych collage a’r corff. Mae ei gwaith yn ymddangos yn Word & Image, British Art Studies, The Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Journal 18, ac Eighteenth-Century Fiction, ac eraill. Mae wedi dal cymrodoriaeth ymchwil cyfnod byr yng Nghanolfan Celf Prydeinig Iâl, Amgueddfa Winterthur, Llyfrgell Huntington, Canolfan Harry Ransom, Prifysgol Sant Andrew a’r Library Company of Philadelphia. Cafodd ei monograff Domestic Space in Britain, 1750-1840: Materiality, Sociability and Emotion ei gyhoeddi’n ddiweddar gan Bloomsbury.