Vaughan Forum: Setts, Sex and Compound Fractures: Touch and Texture in Provincial Town Centres, 1930 to 1975

Presented by Dr Denise McHugh and Dr Lucy Faire

This talk considers people’s experiences of touch and texture in town and city centres in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Touch involved contact with objects as well as other people: it was not just experienced by hands and fingers but by feet, shoulders, torsos. In the period, new kinds of textures emerged such as plastic and concrete, and push-button technology provided novel touch experiences. We will also examine some of the emotions that accompanied these experiences of touch and texture. While our examples use memories, film and photographs from provincial towns around Britain, there will be quite a bit of Leicester history in the talk.

This is an in-person event. There will be tea, coffee and cake from 6.15. The talk will start at 6.30pm.

About the Presenters

Denise and Lucy are historians who are interested in the mundane activities, emotions and sensory experiences of town and city centres. They have published several articles together including ‘Sensory and Emotional Histories of the High Street’, Context, 171 (2022), 24-2 and ‘Twelve Shades of Grey: Encountering Urban Colour in the Street in British Provincial Towns, c. 1945-1970’, Urban History, 46:2 (2019), 288-308. Both are LVC members and regular attendees of the Vaughan Forum.