Queer* Connections at Osterley House

This March will see the launch of a self-guided Queer Connections tour following Osterley's participation as a case study for the Queer Your Historic House toolkit. The toolkit was created by Indigo Dunphy-Smith and with the Queer Heritage and Collections Network.

Osterley's Queer Connections tour leaflet is available to all visitors at reception.

*'Queer' has begun to be used as a term that encompasses all aspects of gender and sexuality as a spectrum, rather than a series of definite, fixed categories.

*Queer is a term used where other words don’t fully describe your gender identity and/or sexual orientation, or it isn’t known. For example, ‘queer histories.’ These are people: • who lived outside gender expectations of their own time • didn’t have the option to describe themselves in modern language.

The Byres Family Portrait by Franciszek Smuglewicz features in Osterley's Queer Connections leaflet guide, and you can see the painting on display in the Yellow Breakfast Room in the House. There is a new article by Indigo Dunphy-Smith available on the National Library of Scotland website that contains some exciting modern illustrations reimagining James Byres and Christopher Norton's apartment in Rome. https://www.nls.uk/collections/stories/scottish-history/a-jacobite-abroad-queer-lives-in-the-archives/