About the
Project
Buckinghamshire Archives is home to over 800 years of our county’s history. Within the archives are many ‘hidden histories’ of communities whose voices are not heard, because they do not appear in the archives catalogues. The Lost Victorian Voices project has sought to address this by uncovering the stories of the LGBTQ+ communities in Victorian Buckinghamshire. The aim was to give back a voice to historic LGBTQ+ communities, allow them to be seen as real people with whole and complete lives, to tell their stories and celebrate their place in our history. It was a project over five years in the making, and in 2024 the archives received a grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund in order to make the dream a reality.
Over the course of six months a dedicated team of volunteers underwent a programme of training, working alongside academics and specialists in LGBTQ+ history. A wide range of records held in Buckinghamshire Archives were scoured for references to potential members of the historic LGBTQ+ communities, with selected stories also undergoing further research at different archival collections across the country. Through this process, we were able to build up a detailed picture of the lives of some of these individuals.
The question then was how to make this research accessible to the public in creative and engaging forms. The stories uncovered by the research were often distressing, due to their frequent origin in criminal prosecutions. However it’s also true that these were often people with long, rich lives, of which only fragments will ever be uncovered by historical research, and it was equally important to us that we represent the possibility of light and joy in their lives.
To this end, we worked with a team of professional artists and volunteers in order to develop a series of artistic works, which would both platform the research and also celebrate these stories and explore what their individual lives might have looked like. Where history had often previously distilled the life of a person down to a solitary, isolated, and negative entry in a criminal or medical record, the Lost Victorian Voices project aimed to build them back up to the person they truly were, with the dignity and presence that they never should have been denied.
Over the next six months our artists and volunteers got to work, with the final outcomes including a podcast, theatre production, touring exhibition and graphic novel, all inspired by the project research.
All of these creative works have been reproduced digitally and are available for free on this website. You can find out more about them here.
They are also held permanently by the archives and can be engaged with in person at Buckinghamshire Archives.
You can read more about the legacy of the project and its part in shaping the archives’ approach to future collections here.
About our Funder
The National Lottery Heritage Fund is the largest funder for the UK’s heritage. Using money raised by National Lottery players we support projects that connect people and communities to heritage. Our vision is for heritage to be valued, cared for and sustained for everyone, now and in the future. From historic buildings, our industrial legacy and the natural environment, to collections, traditions, stories and more. Heritage can be anything from the past that people value and want to pass on to future generations. We believe in the power of heritage to ignite the imagination, offer joy and inspiration, and to build pride in place and connection to the past.
