Our first day at the Royal Albert Hall

In June 2026 we began the British Academy SHAPE Involve and Engage project ‘Strength and Combat at the Royal Albert Hall’ with a trip down to the archive. The team spent two days exploring the amazing collection, working with archivist Alicia Kirkbride. The RAH has an overwhelming (in a good way) collection of documents and photographs pertaining to its sporting history. In the end we began to prioritise the wrestling history, acknowledging that the RAH’s boxing history is a project all of itself.

The first wrestling match took place in 1904 between George Hackenschmidt and Tom Jenkins. There follows a dynamic lineage of wrestling from the 1930s All In matches led by Atholl Oakeley to monthly bouts run by Dale Martin with larger-than-life characters like Giant Haystacks and Big Daddy. The most recent documents come from the late 2010s when WWE NXT performed there, though the WWE has a long history at the RAH with shows in the 1990s; there are some amazing photos of the latter in the archive.

We spent time talking as a team about the next steps which will be a second visit in the Autumn and then an exhibition and performance in Leicester in early 2027 run by Wrestling Resurgence. Our discussion considered the troublesome nature of the archive as well as the things that inspired us; what to do with promotional materials that celebrate black wrestlers and yet often use derogatory framings or how to reimagine the archive’s gender imbalance especially as, in Resurgence, we employ many women on the roster. These are the sort of challenges that archives always through up. But we also revelled in the artistry of the posters and chatted about the place of nostalgia in wrestling history.

The team had a brilliant day and can’t wait for the next instalment of this project in the Autumn.