ABSTRACT
The relationship between historical knowledge and imagination is made more complicated by more-than rational experiences and beliefs involving the continuing ‘presences’ of the past. This chapter examines their impact upon people’s relationships with their homes. Imagining previous inhabitants in the private spaces of the home can, if the distance of time is removed, cause a visceral reaction; the past becomes too close for comfort. For most participants, the home was considered a container of lingering past effects, complicated by the fact that it continued to be a place of present and ongoing occupants and events. In many cases, contemporary circumstances appeared to contribute to its accumulated affects—Yolanda’s ‘stored memories’, which, for Susan in south London are ‘layers of experience’ creating a ‘patina of memories’. Perhaps inevitably, speculation turned to death; there was an understanding that, like births, these would often take place at home.
