Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the social life of the River Tyne by reconstructing a 'hidden history' of its once-popular Barge Day ritual. Using original archival sources, the paper shows how ordinary people were involved in the event and reveals both its 'carnivalesque' atmosphere and political symbolism.

Paper long abstract:

New environmental histories have rehabilitated water memories of the complex socio-natural relations and environmental processes that have shaped the making of the River Tyne, in the northeast of England (Skelton, 2017; Coates, 2018). The river has also attracted commentary from sociologists and geographers who have studied changes to the urban waterfront and new public infrastructure that has emerged because of culture-led regeneration (Bailey et al, 2004; Miles, 2005; Mah, 2010). The literatures have produced a 'Tyneography' that has fed a 'fluvial sense of place' and a memoryscape defined by environmental change in the face of industrialisation and waterfront transformation through the emerging post-industrial economy. Somewhat neglected, however, has been smaller stories of socio-cultural use, ritual and event. This paper seeks to extend our understanding of the social life of the River Tyne by reconstructing a 'hidden history' of its Barge Day ritual. This annual Ascension Day custom, which ended in 1901, was a major public holiday and transformed the river into a festive space as Newcastle's mayor, civic dignitaries and trade guilds processed along the river to assert riparian water rights. Using original archival sources that have been extensively mined to help reconstruct the history of Barge Day, the paper seeks to capture the 'carnivalesque' atmosphere of the event and its meanings, drawing out the heterotopic qualities of the ritual as experienced in Tyneside, alongside a more measured evaluation of the ritual's contribution to the performance and consolidation of the power and privileges enjoyed by local political and commercial elites.