Why English Heritage is encouraging adults to dress up | Heritage

Parents are used to watching their children eagerly dress up as a knight or a gladiator before going bananas when they visit castles, forts and stately homes.

But English Heritage believes adults will also get more out of visiting their sites if they leave their inhibitions aside and don a Roman toga or medieval chainmail for the day.

The charity has commissioned psychological research on the effects of age on imagination, inspiring curators to offer dressing up for adults at 11 of its sites this summer.

“Adults often forget how much fun dressing up can be,” said Beth Stone, the head of visitor experience at English Heritage. “It is about imagination and stepping back in history.”

In August the charity will offer adults the opportunity to dress up at properties across England, which could mean wearing what Stone described as a “fabulous, layered” toga at Corbridge Roman town on Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland, a second world war uniform at Wrest Park in Bedfordshire or a vampire cape at Whitby Abbey – the Gothic ruin that provided inspiration for Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula.

Stone said she hopes adults will leave their inhibitions at the door when they visit. “Whether they want to be a steely knight, a judicious Roman senator or an opulent Elizabethan lady, we have just the outfit,” she promised.

It is a fun initiative, but also a serious one, with English Heritage embarking on the project after commissioning the research on imagination and age. Contrary to popular belief, the research concluded that adult imagination is not only as vivid as a child’s but also becomes more active with age.

The research, from the University of Kent’s psychology department, involved a team asking more than 470 visitors to Dover Castle, aged between four and 81, to imagine how a number of unfamiliar Roman objects might have been used.

The objects included a portable altar, a dress fastener, a weight and a mold in the shape of a warrior god. All the answers were then evaluated for fluency, flexibility, proximity, elaboration and originality.

Among the more striking conclusions was the increase in originality with age – older adults were more likely to provide more detailed and colourful ideas.

Angela Nyhout, an assistant professor who led the research, said this showed people needed the right environment and opportunity to explore the limits of imagination. “These new findings dispel the commonly held belief that humans lose their imaginations as they age,” she said. “Instead, it shows that our imaginations continue to grow and change even throughout adulthood, with the over 60s actually showing the most originality.

“Adults’ imaginations can be just as vivid as children’s but what they already know about the world constrains imagination in some cases and enhances it in others.”

Nyhout recalled the fun she and everyone else had when she went to a wedding in Canada and all the guests had to be dressed in gold rush costumes.

Anyone who was at Whitby Abbey last year when 1,369 people turned up dressed as vampires in a successful world record attempt will know the thrill everyone appeared to get by dressing up.

It does confirm “what we already suspected from watching our visitors interact on site”, said Stone, who added that adults will also be encouraged to take part in hands-on history sessions such as neolithic crafts or exercises at a sword fighting school.

The adult dressing-up plan is central to English Heritage’s One Extraordinary Summer campaign that will include a television advert.

As well as vampires at Whitby and Romans at Corbridge, there will also be medieval costumes at Dover Castle in Kent and Bolsover Castle in Derbyshire; Tudor robes and gowns at Eltham Palace in London, Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire, and Pendennis Castle in Cornwall; and smart Victorian garb at Boscobel in Shropshire, Osborne House on the Isle of Wight and Witley Court in Worcestershire.

It is not only children who should be dressing up at castles and forts and stately homes, says English Heritage – adults can get more from their visit by donning a toga, a vampire cape or some medieval chainmail.