In this exciting interdisciplinary volume, researchers, archivists, curators and social scientists offer a fresh exploration of the concept of well-being in Britain throughout history and in the present day. Well-being Past and Present examines the various ways well-being has been invoked as a concept or term throughout historical periods, attending to its multifarious meanings and its significance on the way we live our lives. Focusing on the interactions between historical research and heritage and archival methods and practices, the volume bridges the gap between historical experiences of well-being and contemporary well-being interventions by institutions and communities. Across sixteen chapters the authors in Well-being Past and Present travel from the battlefield to the library, the orchard to the archive, and the country house to the hospital ward, examining well-being’s own historical and contemporary position in discourses like leisure, health and happiness. The key questions this volume asks are: has the concept of well-being become too nebulous to carry any real meaning? What happens to the term when we place it in the range of very different contexts that it finds a home in? How do past discourses of well-being connect to the present? How widely is well-being and associated activities spread across our diverse societies? Well-being Past and Present is a timely volume and contributes not just to our historical understanding of well-being but how we can utilise history and heritage to establish communities of care in Britain.

Table of Contents:
1. ‘Mindfulness and the mise-en-page’: Medieval women’s well-being and the book of hours, Sue Niebrzydowski, Bangor University, UK 2 ‘In this orchard, when you would be comforted’: Using garden spaces for familial intimacy and well-being in late medieval England, Rachel Moss, University of Northampton, UK 3 ‘In your well-being is cheife felicity’: Physical, social and emotional health in seventeenth-century family letters, Emma Marshall, University of York 4 ‘The only place that can heighten my enjoyment of my friends’: Well-being at Wrest Park in the eighteenth century, Jemima Hubberstey 5 ‘Showing feelings’: Exploring and exhibiting elite women’s emotional experiences of the eighteenth-century country house, Ruby Rutter, University of Manchester, UK 6 ‘A place to breathe’: Ecotherapy, museums and the Victorian asylum, Emily Bavellas, Northampton Museum and Art Gallery, UK 7 Women and welfare: Philanthropy in the Northampton boot and shoe industry in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Kathrina Perry, University of Northampton, UK 8 ‘A panacea for wounds’: Tobacco, well-being and resilience during the First World War Michael Reeve, The Open University, UK 9 Notes from Abington Community Library, 1939–2023, Sue Botterill and Siobhan Hyland, Abington Community Library and University of Northampton, UK 10 Well-being in mental health nurses’ working lives: Reflections on past and present, Claire Chatterton, Th Open University, UK 11 ‘Caring archives’: Well-being challenges in an archive of extremism – Lessons and questions from a decade of the Searchlight Archive, Siobhan Hyland and Dan Jones, University of Northampton, UK 12 ‘Can heritage change visitor well-being?’ An overview of heritage places research in England, Faye Sayer and Amy Luck, University of Birmingham, UK 13 ‘Art cares?’: Creative workshops, social justice and positive psychology, Tamsin Greaves, Nottingham Trent University, UK 14 ‘Why we are not all going on a summer holiday?’ An examination of barriers to ethnic minority participation in leisure activities and domestic tourism in the UK, Marcella Daye, University of Northampton, UK