ABSTRACT
In the 1960s in Britain, early days for heritage, and a decade before the term “heritage industry” was coined, debates about what should or should not be foregrounded, what should or should not be included in the story of the past in museums, schools, and in the discipline of history itself, were well under way.1 Whether the heritage created and crystallized as projects were planned, money earmarked, and sponsorship sought reflected anything but a reassertion of older hierarchies in new dress, or whether it was a democratization of the past, remains an open question. Just as some heritage projects invited a sentimentalizing and ahistoric account of the past, others encouraged the individual to look in the attic for old photographs of the family, or to search parish registers for ancestors’ births, deaths, and marriages: the reach of heritage was broad enough to include both the artifacts of the aristocracy and grandma’s clothing.
