Edgehill, Naseby, and the Ghosts of the Civil Wars

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the shifting significance of the spectres of Britain’s Civil Wars from the seventeenth to the mid-twentieth century. Focusing on the supernatural stories that have adhered to various Midlands sites, and to the battlefields at Edgehill and Naseby in particular, it illuminates the ways in which the ghosts of Britain’s domestic conflicts have been used to interrogate and express contemporary anxieties about the impact and aftermath of conflict across several centuries. In so doing, it draws attention to the significant – but often overlooked – role that the Civil Wars have played in the Gothic tradition. It also establishes the significance of Midlands sites as loci of Civil War memory, engendering a multi-layered reading of land and memory in which spectres of war, both past and present, might enter into dialogue over the meaning of conflict and the enduring presence of the past.