Cultureshock

You need Adobe Flash installed to watch this movie.
Get Adobe Flash

Video transcript

One of my main interests in archives is finding out about other people’s lives through the papers they’ve left – usually with no thought that someone else would be reading them decades or centuries after they wrote their words.

I first moved to Newcastle about 15 years ago, having only visited a few times before I took the job as archivist here and I didn’t know anyone here. But my work gave me unique access into the private thoughts of people who had lived here in the past.

About six months after I arrived, I found the house that I wanted to live in and as well as making it my own, I wanted to find out about its past and the people who had lived in it before me. It’s an ordinary terraced house exactly like thousands of others in the city, but like people, every house has its own story. From the records in the archives I was able to find out about the story of my house – how Mr Forsyth, a speculative builder, had bought up farmland, the plans he submitted to build a brand new terrace of seven houses, and how the shapes of his new streets followed the lines of the old fields that he quickly covered with buildings… some squeezed into corners that weren’t really big enough. I could also find out who the people were who moved into the new houses, although none of them seem to have left any personal papers, so I couldn’t find out what their thoughts were about their new lives.

For me, starting a new life in Newcastle, I could feel connected with these people who had lived in the same space as me. Some people might feel freaked out at the thought of sharing their daily lives with ghosts, but the feeling I have is that they enjoyed their time living in my house and I’ve enjoyed living in their house.