Alice Gomme: Game Collector

Alice Gomme: Game Collector

By Amara Thornton (Co-Investigator, Beyond Notability project)

In March 2024 ‘Five Stones for Alice’ premiered in London, at a workshop held at the Society of Antiquaries in Burlington House–the very same site, in fact, that hosted the International Folklore Congress in 1891. Alice Gomme was a pivotal part of the organisation of the Folklore Congress, serving as the Honorary Secretary on the Congress’s Reception and Entertainment Committee. As part of the Congress, Alice Gomme organised a special event featuring performances of children’s songs and games using students from the village school at Barnes, where she lived with her husband and children at the time of the Congress.

Alice is one of many folklorists whose lives and work are being researched as part of a 3-year AHRC funded project, ‘Beyond Notability: Re-Evaluating Women’s Work in Archaeology, History and Heritage in Britain 1870-1950’ (www.beyondnotability.org).  The Folklore Society’s archive is a rich source of detail on women’s work in folklore–particularly through the significant collection of correspondence to Alice Gomme in the months leading up to and just after the 1891 Congress, which include letters from a number of other women in our database. The Beyond Notability project would like to thank the Folklore Society for allowing us access to its historic records, and Caroline Oates for her advice and support.

Working with storyteller Vanessa Woolf as the project’s creative practitioner was written into our funding application. We commissioned Vanessa to create four stories on selected women from our research. Alice Gomme ended up being one of the women for whom Vanessa created a story. The stories Vanessa has created for our project draw on our project research, but are creative re-imaginings, moving into a space just beyond our evidence.

‘Five Stones for Alice’ takes us to Barnes, with Alice Gomme as an expectant working mother. There are pressures of home and family life that she must balance with her research interests–we wanted to acknowledge the fact that Alice and her husband Laurence Gomme were both active folklorists, and the parents of a growing number of children (ultimately, seven sons) with (from the data available) very little help. The story presents an interpretation of Alice’s working life, imagining what it must have been like for Alice both as a collector, and a mother. And it begins, appropriately, with a song.

Further Resources

Audio Recording of ‘Five Stones for Alice’ https://youtu.be/GCXU0Y1kj3w

Project website: www.beyondnotability.org

Blogpost on the development of the stories: https://beyondnotability.org/biographical/four-stories-for-beyond-notability/

Women connected to the Folklore Society in the Beyond Notability database: https://beyond-notability.wikibase.cloud/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/Item:Q292&limit=500

Vanessa Woolf’s website: https://londondreamtime.com/

Vanessa’s blog on developing the Alice Gomme story: https://londondreamtime.com/beyond-notability-alice-gomme/