Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book traces the history of the ultimately unsuccessful attempts to create an English Folk Museum over the course of the early and mid-twentieth century. It provides a critique of a very different top-down heritage initiative and describes a description of a group of Cheltenham-based Gloucester Rugby Club supporters travelling to a home match by train. The book explores the marketing materials of several British tourist and heritage organisations to highlight the paradox behind the use of the metaphor of their being ‘hidden’ in order to promote visits to heritage sites. It focuses on the far less common use of stifling structures to commemorate the relationships and interactions between humans and animals. The book examines how the interactions between local and diasporic heritage have been operated within community-organised Homecoming Weeks on the Scottish island of Tiree in 2006 and 2016.