Mining memories in a rural community: Landscape, temporality and place identity

Abstract

Unlike formal ‘heritage landscapes’, the role of unmanaged, ‘everyday’ rural landscapes in perpetuating social memories and reiterating certain conceptualisations of place has been relatively overlooked within the rural studies literature. Using the case study of Askam-in-Furness, a former mining village in Cumbria, this paper addresses this gap by exploring how industrial remains within the landscape act as prompts for the recollection of both personal and social place-related memories. In doing so, it also extends some of the learning from urban-centred studies that have explored the affective ability of industrial ruins to bring memories of past people and places into the present. I demonstrate how vestiges of Askam's mining past have become incorporated into local people's experiences of the everyday landscape and, as such, play an important role in understandings of place and temporality. These processes are considered in some depth and their implications for the future management of landscape and ‘heritage’ are also discussed.