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LGBT Archive time capsule

The LGBT Archive (formerly The LGBT History Project) is an archive of the the knowledge and memories of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people living in the UK.

It’s a virtual time-capsule, capturing the experiences of our time as well as the achievements and challenges of previous centuries – the changing law, the amazing response to health epidemics, the newspapers and magazines that come and go, TV programmes, sports, lesbian, gay, bi and trans businesses, arts, music and theatre, and of course events, pubs and clubs. Anything you can think of that has been related to you as an LGBT person. You can even write about yourself!

This project is now a Key Partner of LGBT History Month.

In 2015 CHE voted to support this project.^[1]

Finding information

There are several ways to find information on this site. Note that anywhere you see a word or phrase in blue, you can click on it and be taken to the item in question. If you see words in red, they are links to an article that hasn't been written yet.

browse by date: a good place to start browsing this website is Timeline of UK LGBT History; for links to some more specific timelines see Category:Timelines – and in anticipation of LGBT History Month 2016 we've started creating a new Timeline of UK LGBT Religion, Belief and Philosophy.
browse by category: to get an overview of the range of material that we cover, go to Category:Main categories.
browse by area of the country: our map on the United Kingdom page gives an overview of our geographical coverage, and our maps of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland give links to places round the country
see our small list of Selected articles
take pot luck: use the Random page link at the left.
search for a particular item, using the search box at the top right of the page.

Who is writing it?

You are! If you know a bi, gay, trans or lesbian person, have been a member of a gay club, read a gay newspaper, have a memory of going out with your mates to a gay pub or club, we want to hear about it – wherever you are in the country. If you’ve never done anything gay, because there was nothing in your area, or you were too scared, we want to hear about that too! We also want to hear from those that run gay clubs, businesses, venues, media – when did they start, who started them? Why were they started? Who joined?

Alternatively you can write something personal to you, a ‘vox-pop’. This could be your ‘coming out’ story, or your experience of visiting your first gay bar. These first-person stories are valuable for academics who seek ‘qualitative primary sources’ – i.e. a story that is not necessarily factual, but gives a glimpse of your personal experience and your own viewpoint. If you created one of these, there’s no need to disclose your actual name, and prefix the page title with ‘VP’ and suffix it with the year, e.g. “VP: Joe B’s Coming Out 1985” or “VP: Joe B’s first gay bar 2001”.

If you want to know where to start contributing, click ‘Special pages’ and then ‘Wanted pages’ – this will give a list of page links that have currently not been written. Pages that do not currently have links to, but which we think are important to create, can be found at Articles needed.

We've recently created a new category of "Stub" pages - there are pages with only the most basic information, which we haven't yet had the time or the information to make into a proper article. Any help on these would be very welcome. See Category:Stubs.

For more about contributing to this Wiki, see LGBT History UK:Writing for this Wiki.

Some recent articles
Meg Elizabeth Atkins A few of the articles we've added recently: Edward White Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury, is thought to have been a repressed homosexual; his wife, his brother-in-law, and five of his children were almost certainly gay or lesbian. The crime novelist Meg Elizabeth Atkins (pictured) visited Manchester firms in 1966 urging them to support the decriminalisation of gay sex. In July 2014, Trans Pride Brighton included the country's first ever Trans Pride march. The Three Crowns was a full-time gay pub in Bangor, North Wales from 2003 until it was destroyed by arson in March 2014. William Longchamp (died 1197) was Bishop of Ely and virtual ruler of England while Richard I was away on the Crusades. Sir Edmund Backhouse (1873–1944) was an expert on Chinese history and a suspected forger. Frank Hird (1873–1937) was a journalist and writer, long-term lover of Lord Ronald Gower, and subject of a portrait by Henry Scott Tuke. For a full list of recent additions, see New Pages.
Did you know?
Chelsea Manning (as Bradley Manning) Chelsea Manning (pictured), American soldier serving 35 years in gaol for leaking military secrets, went to school in Haverfordwest. the poet Lord Byron swam from Europe to Asia in 1810, which is said to have started the sport of open water swimming. Sir Winston Churchill was accused in 1895 of "gross immorality of the Oscar Wilde type". The Ladies of Llangollen eloped from their families in 1780 and lived together for the rest of their lives. A professor has maintained that the composer Handel was part of a homosexual circle. Sex between men was illegal in the Isle of Man until 1992. the sixth century King Maelgwn of Gwynedd in North Wales was described as "addicted very much to the detestable vice of sodomy". The Bulldog in St James's Street is the longest established gay pub in Brighton. In 1981 the London Pride march was moved to Huddersfield. The former Spitfire pilot and racing driver Robert Cowell had sex reassignment surgery in 1951, becoming Roberta Cowell. In the 18th century, gay lovers Stephen Fox and John Hervey were both MPs and subsequently members of the House of Lords.