Victoria Nutt

Making Progress with the Queen

In Making Progress with the Queen I take a design history view of the Elizabethan progresses, exploring the spatial negotiations inherent in moving the Elizabethan court through the counties and towns of England. A 16th century commentator observed that during progress:

because few succeed in finding accommodation at an inn, they erect tents under which they sojourn, thus presenting the appearance of an encampment.

This is suggestive of the visual impact and the invasive materiality of progress.

During the summer progresses, the apparelling process of erecting the Queen's material world facilitated the appropriation of diverse houses along her route. In addition, the methodical application of removing locks by the officials of the royal household negotiated internal distinctions of access. This royal colonisation had a conflicted relationship with courtiers who were both part of this process, and at the same time employed their own spatial agency. Distinguishing the spaces of progress requires a definition of their limits; these were established by the displacement and the expulsion of marginal social elements.

Progress was a series of ephemeral, material, moments created by conflicting agencies and linked by movement. In the latter part of my dissertation, motion is examined through the development of the coach and the use of spaces like the gatehouse that ritualised moments of transition. My work questions binaries of the permanent and the temporary by examining memories of progress in gifts, souvenir books, and in the surviving remnants of places and spaces such as Kenilworth castle, pictured here.