Soundscape Case Study: A Tudor Soundscape in a Historic House Chapel – Origins, Challenges and Evaluation

Abstract

During an extensive conservation project in 2017, the National Trust, working with academics from Oxford, Southampton and Bangor Universities and drawing on research in the re-enactment of medieval liturgy, experimented with a soundscape installation at The Vyne, a manor house near Basingstoke. Dealing with the challenge of telling a Tudor story without a contemporaneous collection, the soundscape deployed specially commissioned new recordings of Tudor polyphony and plainsong, spoken and intoned prayers, and Foley effects to simulate the celebration of Mass in The Vyne's pre-Reformation chapel. The soundscape imagines a moment in 1535 when Henry VIII attended a Lady Mass, surveying the service from his position of power in the lord's chambers above the chapel. It places visitors at the heart of a politically-charged time for both his religious reforms and his marriage, standing where his officers of the church would have stood as the liturgy and Nicholas Ludford's elaborate polyphonic music unfolded around them. Although the soundscape provides a model for using sound in immersive storytelling in fragile historic house environments, evidence of impact on visitors is limited by current evaluation methods commonly employed in the sector. This case study describes the rationale and construction of the soundscape, evaluates existing evidence for impact on visitors, and proposes alternatives for better evaluating historic house soundscapes.