Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

Tents represent a critical part of the architectural canon spanning both centuries and civilizations but are often overlooked in favour of those buildings that have left a longer-lasting mark on their surroundings. In the introduction to his 1979 book, Tents: Architecture of the Nomads, Torvald Faegre wrote that 'In a sense, tents are the truest architecture: our word architect comes from the Greek archi, "one who directs" and tectos, the "weaving"'. The feting of the late Pritzker Prize winning architect Frei Otto, whose 1972 tensile canopy for the Munich Olympic Stadium is still considered one of the landmarks of world architecture and an apogee of tent construction, demonstrates that tents can be some of the most futuristic and sophisticated building types. However, most tents fulfil a much more basic function for, as Faegre's Tents (1979) reminds us, they also have the capacity to serve a primal need for shelter and flexibility of situation. For many casual observers tents are simply resonant of camping holidays but the stereotype that this conjures distracts from the significance of the tent as a structure that is able to embody messages of both libertarianism and authoritarianism in a single object. Accordingly the architecture critic Tom Dyckhoff, summed up his thoughts on the importance of tents in his 2014 BBC documentary Tents: The Beginnings of Architecture by saying, 'stitched into the fabric of all tents is a defiant streak; they are a rebellious force in both architecture and society at large' ('Tents - The Beginning of Architecture', The Culture Show. BBC2. 24 July 2014). This project considers the tent as an important expression of architecture at an earlier point of apogee through a study of the design of the royal tents and associated temporary structures that were built for the sixteenth-century English court by the Office of Tents and Revels. In doing so it responds to all three of the themes cited above - those of sophistication, itinerancy and symbolism - and pushes the boundaries of our current understanding of early modern architecture and, by association, politics. The project is timed to underpin preparations for the 500th anniversary of the Field of Cloth of Gold in 2020, an event that arguably defined the importance of tents and temporary structures as a tool of European monarchy in the period and as an outlet for creativity in architecture and design. However, the project spreads its net wider than that single event to review the role of the royal tent across the whole period from the accession of Henry VIII to the death of Elizabeth I. Supporting the project is a rich vein of evidence that includes paintings and drawings, account books, inventories, chronicles, furniture and surviving fragments said to be from royal tents that has never before been collated and reviewed as a whole. By doing so this project will both highlight the important role played by tents in European diplomacy and will demonstrate that the Office of Tents and Revels employed renowned craftsmen whose work on temporary structures playfully and experimentally pushed the boundaries of architectural and decorative design at a time widely acknowledged as a great period of development in English architectural history. The project will culminate in the construction of a recreated royal tent that will act as a piece of experimental archaeology or practice-based research and a high-impact way of engaging broad audiences with the themes of architecture, power and magnificence at the Tudor courts.

At the centenary of 2014, 'Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red' became the surprising star of commemorative activity. This art installation of 888,246 comprised ceramic poppies, planted in undulating waves in the Tower of London moat. Its popularity showed that far from declining, World War I (WWI) commemoration was still intensely popular with the British public. 'Lest we forget' is an innovative project which will use new methodologies to probe a unique and large data set which was collected as part of the installation, and thus to investigate how people made sense of, and engaged with, it. The project will contextualize the installation by explaining the ways in which the public(s) commemorated the First World War more widely, building on a century of WWI historiography and looking at commemoration in a 21st century context. Finally, it will look at whether any other project could achieve public impact comparable to that of 'Blood Swept Lands', and if so, how this might be achieved. Each of the 888,246 ceramic poppies in the installation was created to represent a single life; or rather a death. The number of ceramic poppies and the scale of the installation were its defining features both in terms of the spectacle it created in the moat, but also in the meanings people made of the artwork. Volunteers, staff, visitors and purchasers frequently referred to the emotional significance of 'one poppy, one life'. Each handmade poppy embodied individuality within the conformity which is associated with military service in WWI. No two poppies were the same, connecting the individuality of the dead combatants with the horrifying scale of the war. This project looks beyond the spectacle of 'Blood Swept Lands'. It uses the installation as a case study through which some of the wider issues of WWI commemoration can be understood. It will look at how the public made sense of the WWI centenary, and how they used the installation to create meanings, express emotions, and share these with a wider group of people. It will then explore the ways in which people interacted with 'Blood Swept Lands' through different media; from volunteering to 'plant' poppies, visiting the installation, sharing photographs on social media, and depositing home-made artefacts at the Tower; to attending a nightly roll-call ceremony, or buying a ceramic poppy. The public engaged with the installation on multiple levels, and the levels of public involvement also helped shape the installation and its project, which became a media phenomenon. This research project will investigate the importance of this engagement; it will also critique the way the project was perceived as a 'success' by the public, media and Historic Royal Palaces. It will achieve this by using data collected as part of the Blood Swept Lands project, and applying methodologies from other disciplines to probably the largest data set of commemorative activity available for research. It is timely to study the impact of 'Blood Swept Lands' and its place within WWI centenary commemorations as the 2014-18 centenary draws to a close in 2018. Further fieldwork in 2018 will look at the longer term impact of the 2014 commemorations, and ask whether and how attitudes to 'Blood Swept Lands' and commemoration have changed over the 4 years, 2014-18. The research will explore what constituted the 'success' of 'Blood Swept Lands' and whether this success can be replicated in future commemorations and commemorative programmes. 'Lest we forget' will disseminate its research findings through conference papers and published journal articles. It will bring together heritage practitioners and academics from history, heritage, and memory studies in order to share and discuss future engagement with commemoration in heritage and museums. It will deliver public impact through regular blog posts, public talks and a Teacher Fellowship programme, resulting in 10 new free teacher resources.

This equipment investment project will enable Historic Royal Palaces (HRP) to achieve the full scale of our ambition as a cross-disciplinary Independent Research Organisation (IRO) within the heritage science landscape. HRP is an independent charity which cares for six historic royal sites: the UNESCO World Heritage Site Tower of London; Hampton Court Palace; Kensington Palace; the Banqueting House White Hall; Kew Palace, Kew Pagoda and Queen Charlotte's Cottage; and Hillsborough Castle and Gardens. HRP are the trusted custodians of more than 60,000 objects, with one of the largest number of tapestries, baroque wall paintings and state beds on display in the UK. The Collection is housed in more than 1,000 rooms across the six sites. The HRP scientific laboratory was founded 30 years ago and since then HRP has established a distinguished reputation in the field of heritage science and conservation research, collaborating extensively with academic, heritage and industry partners on innovative projects and the supervision of doctoral students and disseminating results through publications and papers. This work has included the sharing of equipment and access to on site spaces, collections and resources. The HRP scientific laboratory was initially set up to investigate historic textiles, most notably the internationally significant collection of tapestries at Hampton Court Palace. Over the years, however, both the scope of work needed across the entirety of HRP's buildings and collections and developments in technologies and equipment mean that despite ongoing investment by the charity the laboratory is in need of significant capital investment to enable HRP and its collaborators to continue their pioneering research. The proposed equipment upgrade will result in a step-change in the ability of HRP and its partners to undertake detailed scientific and aesthetical analysis of heritage assets and complement the currently available instrumentation by providing in depth information and data on the condition, materials and manufacturing techniques of our palaces and collections. More specifically, the upgrade will enable HRP to pursue three research discovery projects within the early years of the new infrastructure. Banqueting House Rubens Ceilings Paintings aims to undertake complex surveys and cross-discipline analysis to determine how the paintings were created, have altered through material degradation or restoration interventions and establish an accurate record of their present condition to inform changes in visual perception and interpretation over time. Hampton Court Historic Tapestries Protection seeks to integrate and process 10 years of environmental monitoring data and other technical research on the tapestries to improve understanding and preservation of historic tapestries using Building Information Modelling. Non-invasive method to measure damage on historic tapestries using hyperspectral imaging, could be another potential research collaboration between HRP and UCL which would seek funding from AHRC for a larger-scale project to set up a bespoke imaging project in Hampton Court Palace to predict the level of damage on tapestries in-situ using instrumentation funded by this call. HRP receives no funding from central government or the Crown, and is therefore solely reliant on income from visitors, members, donors, sponsors and research funding. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic HRP has seen a shortfall in income of 95 million pounds in the financial year 2020-2021 and does not project recovery of pre-pandemic visitor numbers until 2023-24 at the earliest. Despite HRPs commitment to heritage science and the HRP scientific laboratory, therefore, it is highly unlikely that there will be funds available from within the organisation for the proposed equipment investment for at least the next five years.

The Great Hall at Hampton Court Palace is the only great hall built by Henry VIII. It is also the only existing Renaissance building in England for which there is unambiguous evidence of its being used for performances throughout the period c.1525 - 1658. In particular, the Great Hall at Hampton Court is largely the same space today as it was when William Shakespeare staged his A Midsummer Night's Dream before James I and VI. \n\nStaging the Henrician Court is an interdisciplinary research project into John Heywood's drama, the Play of the Wether. It will be based on historical research and textual analysis and will use dramatic performances and workshops in the Great Hall at Hampton Court to research the Henrician court. There has been some very useful research conducted at the New Globe based upon the recreation of authentic performances of Shakespeare's plays but what makes Staging the Henrician Court unique is that the Great Hall at Hampton Court is largely the same as it was in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This means that the kind of codas and caveats that inevitably surround research conducted in reconstructed performance spaces like the New Globe will be less pressing when working in the Great Hall. \n\nStaging the Henrician Court is the second stage of the project. The first stage, which was funded by the AHRC and was completed in the May 2007, staged a workshop in the Great Hall in order to define the kind of problems that need to be solved before a full research-led production of a Henrician court drama could be successfully produced in the Hall. The results of this initial project, and its sucess, forms the foundation of the current grant application. \n\nStaging the Henrician Court will use The Play of the Wether, by John Heywood, one of the leading playwrights of the period, in order to research, through performance, the way court space was managed at Henry VIII's court. In this play the God Jupiter, representing Henry VIII, decides to come to earth and resolve the constant debates that humans have over which is the best kind of weather. He finds, however, that no-one can agree. Millers want rain while washer women want sun and wind and little boys desire snow. In the end Jupiter decides to leave things as they are. The play is an allegory of the religious choices facing Henry in 1533 and subtly argues that the best policy for the king to follow is to do nothing, while trying to pacify existing disputes. \n\n2009 will be the anniversary of Henry VIII's succession in 1509. Staging the Henrician Court is fully supported by Historic Royal Palaces, the charity that manages Hampton Court, and will form an important part of the events planned for 2009 to mark Henry's succession. \n