Available via license: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Content may be subject to copyright.
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at
https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rlst20
Leisure Studies
ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rlst20
Leisure, religion and the (Infra)secular city: the
Manchester and Salford Whit Walks
Louise Platt, Rebecca Abushena & Robert Snape
To cite this article: Louise Platt, Rebecca Abushena & Robert Snape (2021): Leisure, religion
and the (Infra)secular city: the Manchester and Salford Whit Walks, Leisure Studies, DOI:
10.1080/02614367.2021.1933573
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02614367.2021.1933573
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa
UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis
Group.
Published online: 31 May 2021.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 98
View related articles
View Crossmark data
Leisure, religion and the (Infra)secular city: the Manchester and
Salford Whit Walks
Louise Platt
a
, Rebecca Abushena
a
and Robert Snape
b
a
Manchester Metropolitan University, Faculty of Business and Law, All Saints Campus, Manchester, UK;
b
School of
the Arts, University of Bolton, Bolton, UK
ABSTRACT
Drawing on the Manchester and Salford Whit Walks, a Church of England
Whitsuntide procession, this research adopts della Dora’s concept of the
infrasecular to interpret the interstitiality of the religious or civic nature of
leisure experiences in the urban context. Processional walking at
Whitsuntide originated as a pre-industrial custom that was simultaneously
a religious and a leisure practice. However, with the decline of religion the
meanings the Whit Walks have changed in a number of dimensions. Using
the lens of infrasecular geography, this research explored the ways in
which these Walks have remade sacred space in the secular city through
an historical account of their evolution, interviews with participants and
observation. The research re-emphasises the continuing importance of
custom to contemporary leisure practice and through the infrasecular lens
enables new insights into the dynamics of the historical spaces of leisure
practice. The study concludes that religion remains an important inuence
on leisure and that the concept of the infrasecular merits further investi-
gation in leisure practices.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 14 January 2020
Accepted 18 May 2021
KEYWORDS
Religion; secularism; history;
custom; urban space;
procession
Introduction
The Manchester and Salford Whit Walks see religious bodies intersecting with the everyday lives of
city inhabitants by walking in procession from the religious space of Manchester’s Church of
England Cathedral to the civic space of Albert Square and the Town Hall.
1
These Walks offer an
interesting case study of the fluid relationship between religious and secular leisure practices across
progressive phases of modernity. Historically, a significant shaper of leisure practice, religion has
declined in importance as secularism has advanced. However, as the Walks clearly demonstrate, it
has not disappeared. The aim of this paper is to explore the ways in which religion retains the
capacity to mould leisure practice and blur distinctions between the secular and the sacred.
Adopting the Whit Walks as a case study example, the paper utilises the notion of the infra-
secular (della Dora, 2018), whereby the relationship between the religious and secular is problema-
tised to reveal the interstitiality between the religious or civic nature of leisure experiences in the
urban setting. We argue that walking in religious processions and parades occupies the blurred
space between the sacred and the secular. Being grounded in religious custom and church com-
munities, such processions are of both historical and sociological significance.
In terms of leisure, the Whit Walks provoke questions around the historical evolution of
processions and the ways in which they construct place, normally the streets that are paraded, as
simultaneously a religious and a leisure space. They also raise questions about the expression of
CONTACT Louise Platt l.platt@mmu.ac.uk Manchester Metropolitan University, Faculty of Business and Law, All Saints
Campus, Oxford Road, Manchester M15 6BH, UK
LEISURE STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/02614367.2021.1933573
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the
original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
religious identity through leisure in the secular society. A historical approach to this, based on the
evolution of one procession in one city over a long period, provides some tentative answers to these
questions. There has been limited attention paid to the interplay between religious life and secular
leisure in the literature of leisure studies. Whilst there has been some examination of how religious
belief impacts on the leisure experiences of marginalised groups (see, for example, Lenneis &
Agergaard, 2018; Walseth, 2006), this has mainly been within the context of sports participation.
The specific contribution of this paper is its adoption of a historical perspective and the theoretical
lens of the infrasecular to understand the leisure geographies of social events. This approach creates
the potential for such events to reassert their role in civic society more broadly.
The paper will proceed by offering a brief overview of the Whit Walks as a phenomenon. It will
then examine the theoretical foundations and underpinnings in relation to historical and religious
geographies within which this paper locates its analysis. The methodology will then be outlined
before we present our analysis focusing on the spatial and socio-political dimensions of the Walks.
Religion, leisure and space: historical dimensions of the Whit Walks
Many pre-industrial leisure customs and practices had religious significance. Whitsun, or White
Sunday is the feast of Pentecost, one of the great celebrations of the Christian year, so-called because
of the white vestments worn by the priest. Prior to the introduction of the factory system in the late
eighteenth century, feast days were the principal markers of holidays, closely connected not only to
the social life of the church but the reinforcement of the spatial boundaries of the parish. As the
parish was the primary spatial division of the country there was, as Pounds (1994) notes, a high
degree of conformity between the community of the parish and that of the village; consequently, the
identity of the congregation was that of a social as well as a religious collective. Processions became
integral to the celebration of Whitsuntide and served the dual functions of asserting identity and,
through Rogation processions, the ‘beating of the boundary’ to renew the claim to the spatial
dimensions of the parish. Hutton (1996), for example, cites records of processions dating to 1200
which conflated a religious blessing of the crops and communal celebration; Duffy (1992) too has
observed that although processions had symbolic meanings, for example, the bringing of good
weather, they were also celebrations of communal identity. As Rosman (2003) notes, churches and
churchyards were common public spaces, often used for markets, the election of local officials and
fund-raising for the Whitsuntide church ales sold to raise funds for church expenses and the relief of
the poor. Accordingly, the processions celebrated and confirmed the duality of religious and social
space and identity.
Abolished under puritanism (Borsay, 2006), re-established under Charles the Second
(Malcolmson, 1973) and revived in the early nineteenth century, the Walks remained relatively
homogenous in terms of the religious backgrounds of their participants. Several historians have
commented upon the survival of Whitsun as a secular holiday (Griffin, 2002; Lowerson &
Myerscough, 1977; Reid, 2000). However, as Borsay (2006) notes, the festive calendar did not
disappear with industrialisation but remained popular in urban industrial communities, especially
in the north of England. Estabrook (2002) has noted the historical evolution of civic procession and
pageantry and their changing blend of sacred and secular elements. The religious space of the Walks
was contested; according to Royle (2012) the first modern Whit Walk was held in Manchester in
1801 by Anglican Sunday Schools following a split between Non-Conformists and the Church of
England (Entwistle, 2012).
The relationship of the Walks to secular holidays and commercial leisure consumption has
always been evident. The use of leisure activity to assert moral authority became well established in
the rational recreation philosophy of the Victorian and Edwardian period (Heeley, 1986) and it may
be argued that the early Whit Walks were a classical example of this in their attempt to distract the
youth from the Races on Salford’s Kersal Moor,
2
seeking to ‘mould character’ (p. 58) and safeguard
the well-being of the local population. The pivotal role of the Church in this process has been widely
2L. PLATT ET AL.
noted, particularly with regard to young people; Heeley (1986), for example, identified the Whit
Walks as one such ‘virtuous recreation’ (p. 59). Ritual and public ceremony were a bulwark of
British public life in the 1800s through to the early twentieth century and Gunn (2000) has
demonstrated how they enabled civic and public institutions to construct a sense of authority.
Whilst it might be thought that civic ritual has diminished, Roberts (2017) suggests that it has
merely been refocused to account for changing public life, competition for leisure time and
changing consumption patterns.
Wildman (2011) too has examined the Whit Walks as part of civic life in the early twentieth
century, noting how the Catholic walks became an important marker of self and identity, particu-
larly for Manchester’s Irish communities. Her work emphasises the continuing relationship
between faith and space in the city in the inter-war period. The enduring nature of the Walks is
evident. In 2016-2019 (when this research was conducted) between 11 and 17 churches have
participated, with the procession taking at least 20 minutes to pass any one point. However, the
Walks have gradually become incidental to the everyday life of the city, no longer held at
Whitsuntide but on the secular Bank Holiday weekend that superseded it, placing them in
competition with other leisure events. The question thus becomes one of how the religious and
secular spaces created by the walks have changed in an increasingly secular society.
Religious geographies and leisure: Towards an infrasecular approach
Examining ways of being in world through the lens of religious geographies is well established
(Dwyer, 2016; Holloway & Valins, 2002; Hopkins et al., 2013; Kong, 2001; Tse, 2014). The growing
debate on the relationship between morality and geography has become important to a better
understanding of human relationships with the built environment. Smith (2000), for example, has
suggested that in all aspects of life, ‘values are called into play, contested, negotiated and reassessed’
(ibid, p. 2), while Matless (1994) argues that spaces shape the practices of self and moral behaviour
and offer a code of conduct for their leisure use. Referring specifically to religious events in England,
Jenkins (1999, p. 20) has suggested that they give insight to the ‘orderings of everyday life’.
A significant body of literature rejects the notion of total secularisation; Kong (2001), for example,
argues that religion should not be considered a residual category of geography and several writers
have argued the everyday domains of the spiritual and the mundane are not mutually exclusive
(Holloway, 2003; Hopkins et al., 2013; Hunt, 2005). As Kong (2001, p. 95) further suggests, religious
rituals retain significant social functions which may even be in conflict, for example, enhancing
bonding social capital while simultaneously eroding bridging social capital and thus being detri-
mental to community cohesion, potentially leading to unrest and violence. Consequently, as Tse
(2014) argues, the distinction between secular and religious space is problematic in that ‘religion
was an interpretive key to the cultural landscape because the landscape itself was theologically
derived’ (ibid, p. 207) and therefore plays a key role in the social (and often physical) construction of
urban space.
This call to attend to religion in the so-called secular city has highlighted a postsecular turn
towards the acceptance of the social function of religion in modern society that has been argued to
be useful to the conceptualisation of experiences (Moberg et al., 2012). Consequently, the city
cannot be examined as a space in which religion plays no role; the blurring of religious and secular
boundaries needs to be accounted for reflexively in any analysis of urban life (Beaumont, Eder, &
Mendieta, 2020). Habermas (2008), for example, has suggested that the notion of the postsecular
society most readily applies to affluent western nation states where, he argues, there has been a shift
to secularisation as higher standards of living have, ‘increased existential security’ (ibid, p. 18). It is
however important to note that the idea of post-secularisation is not merely a ‘coming after’ or
a replacing of secularisation; as Cloke and Beaumont (2013) stress, the postsecular is a blurring
between boundaries rather than a negation of one state by the other. Accordingly, as Olson et al.
(2013) comment, post-secularism it is not solely about new relationships with religion but about
LEISURE STUDIES 3
a plurality of religious subjects being contested in the urban space through lived experiences.
Consequently, the postsecular demands a reflexive approach to secularisation whereby analysis
neither rejects nor normalises one position or the other (Beaumont et al., 2020).
To help unravel this complexity, della Dora (2018) has proposed the idea of the infrasecular as an
alternative to the postsecular. Whilst her analysis is grounded in the transformation of the built
environment from religious into secular usage, for example, the conversion of churches into
community centres or apartment living, the notion of infrasecular has remained under-utilised
within geographies of religion and spirituality and notably absent from leisure scholarship. della
Dora suggests that the infrasecular is useful in ‘capturing the complexity of a society in which the
secular and the religious coexist, overlap and compete’ (ibid, p. 5). The prefix of ‘infra’ suggests on
the one hand, middle, something that happens between the positionalities of religious and non-
religious and, on the other, a way of accounting for latent, affective and embodied religious
experiences. As della Dora notes, ‘sacred space must be approached not as a static entity, nor as
a disembodied set of practices and discourses, but as an assemblage, always made and remade’ (p.
65). Seen through this perspective, the Whit Walks, are not static, despite their seeming historical
uniformity (see Platt & Medway, 2020), but have persisted through changing landscapes and
evolving codes of moral conduct in relation to religious practice, leisure and civic society. Indeed,
one interpretation of infra- given by della Dora is that which is invisible – or concealed. This is
relevant here in that despite their the 200-year history, the Walks have become virtually invisible in
the city with many believing they do not happen anymore. Drawing on Perec’s ‘infra-ordinary’, she
suggests that the infra- allows us to analyse that which is so deeply embedded in a community or
space it has become ‘unseen’ (ibid, p. 48).
In this paper we respond to della Dora’s conclusion that ‘Infrasecular landscapes can be
imagined “cross-sectionally”, that is, as dynamic palimpsests whose layers move simultaneously
at different speeds and scale . . . ’ (p. 64). Platt and Medway (2020) argue that the Whit Walks are
a refrain in the DeleuzoGuttarian sense whereby the Walks are repeated, but with difference. The
historical approach adopted here gives insight to how the Whit Walks have historically blended
religion into the civic and secular identity of the city, ebbing and flowing through the changing
physical, social and cultural landscapes. The importance of a historical approach has been empha-
sised by geographers (Brace et al., 2006, p. 38) where, ‘religion as an axis of identity formation
intersects with other axes of identity, belief and practice, and which, crucially, is often performed
outside of the overtly “sacred” spheres of religious adherence’. In summary, these historical
accounts are important in enhancing our understanding of what is past but also of the present.
Events that have a long historical lineage should not be viewed as linear events if we are to
understand their longevity – we need an infra- analysis.
Methodology
Seeking to test the infrasecular, as an explanatory tool to explain the dual religious and secular
nature of the Whit Walks as a leisure event, the research adopted a multiple-method approach.
Interviews and focus groups were conducted with participants in the Whit Walks. A total of four
churches took part in the focus groups and an interview was conducted with a Canon who had
written a self-published book based on oral histories of the Walks (Burns, 2013). The group
discussions predominantly comprised Church members between the age of 60 to 95 (the dominant
age group participating in the Walks). One focus group had a younger congregation member,
a woman in her twenties and another group was arranged by a community worker in her 30s. The
smallest group had 5 participants and the largest had 12 but some members dipped in and out of the
discussions as they were busy preparing the church hall for an event. The groups were assembled
through email and phone contact with their Church leader/vicar. Observations by the lead author
were undertaken over a period of four years with extensive field notes, film and photo records made.
Alongside this primary data collection, news archives were examined using the Manchester
4L. PLATT ET AL.
Archives and Local Studies library and the online databases of British Newspaper Archive and
Newspapers.com.
All data sources were collaboratively mined across the authors employing collective reflexivity
and emergent themes related to the blurring of secular and religious leisure practice were extra-
polated (Braun & Clarke, 2019). The analysis was reflexive in the sense that we individually
reviewed the data and came together to discuss our own understandings, but different authors
had embodied understandings of different data sets. The first author for example, had conducted
the participant observations and therefore this ‘data set’ was known from the inside by this author
(Coffey, 1999). The other two authors had a more in-depth knowledge of the archival data. This
back-and-forth process led to two core themes which demonstrate the blurring of religious and
secular leisure practices: the spatial dimensions and the social/political landscapes.
Analysis and Discussion: Blurring secular and religious leisure
Spatial Dimensions
Participants’ responses suggested a diminishment of their connection to the spatial dimensions of
a particular parish. As the processions became limited to the city centre their capacity to create
a sense of identity and place had weakened. Participants spoke of how they historically would walk
into the city centre from their parish:
William: All the churches walked down the roads, didn’t they? We’re not talking of a short
distance; we’re talking of a few miles.
Steve: A couple of miles.
Sandra: Blakely, Higher Blakely, [inaudible] and all that.
William: And there wasn’t . . . I think probably the bus services might have even stopped, I can’t
remember, but they may have done. So, getting into Manchester wasn’t a problem. But now, we’ve
got, like as you say, we’ve got the tram system. We’ve also got twice as much traffic on the roads as
probably was then.
There is a definite sense that spatial boundaries have changed over the years and with this a loss
of identity which has been reflected in some aspects of the Walks.:
I came to live in Chorlton, but I am apparently, more importantly, now resident in South Manchester. For the
big shops, cinemas, The Whit Walks and other events we used to go to ‘town’. Now it’s the city centre. I’m not
sure Manchester actually has a centre ‘ [. . . .] I can’t be the only one who feels that those well-defined districts
of days gone by had their own identity and made everyone feel that they belonged somewhere. (Manchester
Evening News, 15 December 2011).
Evidenced in earlier Walks the connection of Walkers to the city centres would have been stronger
due to living and working in these spaces rather than today’s experiences of the postindustrial
suburbanisation of cities. However, this community identity formation, despite geographical
fragmentation, is symbolically maintained through the banners carried by processants. Many of
these are adorned with the name of the parish or the town from which the church is based. They
literally carry their parish location with them on banners, inserting the space of their church into
the urban setting asserting a sense of micro-local pride (see Platt & Medway, 2020).
The above has evidenced that infrasecular spatial dynamics have played out through the history
of the walks. This was exemplified in 2018 where an inebriated homeless man joined the procession,
embodying an encounter between the ‘secular’ city (one with extensive homelessness) and the
temporal religious space of the procession. The movement from an enclosed religious space such as
a Church building into the public space of the street makes such encounters inevitable and the
boundaries between the sacred and the profane become ‘illusory’ (Leone, 2014). This adds weight to
the idea of the existence of an infrasecular city whereby both kinds of events not only coexist but are
also increasingly consciously intertwined. As della Dora (2018, p. 45) states, this is evident in,
‘contemporaneous co-habitation and competition between multiple forms of belief and non-belief,
LEISURE STUDIES 5
as well as by the hidden layers of a collective “religious subconscious” which underpins contem-
porary Western European societies, no matter how secularized’. Thereby a process of making and
remaking the social and religious spatialities of leisure experiences is evident through these
processions.
Contemporary processants were adamant that the Walks were religious processions. One
parishioner emphasised this strongly:
Can I make a distinction as well? Because we are a procession of witness. We’re not a carnival which is entirely
different. And we’re not a march. (Laughter). Because people sometimes try to put that in those names, to our
procession of witness. It is a procession of Christian witness. But we’re not a carnival which were just there for
the fun of it (Ron)
Whilst it is worth pointing out that carnival is a spiritual event, the perception of that label
makes the processants uneasy. However, the importance of walking through the urban spaces
of the city centre on a busy Bank Holiday is not unimportant to participants. As explained
above, the procession is about ‘Christian witness’ but this idea of witness extends beyond
a religious connotation of witness and can instead be seen in terms of being witnessed by
outsiders in the creation of a ‘definitional ceremony’ (Myerhoff, 1986). Moving out of the
spaces of their local parishes or from inside church buildings was considered important to one
bystander, ‘we need to be seen – Christians need to be seen’. The existence of religious
identities has never gone away in the modern urban city but the persistent viewpoint of the
city as secular has created an illusory spatial boundary that leads us to believe that the religious
body will not be found on the streets in public view complicating categories of faith and secular
space (della Dora, 2018).
Social and political landscape
By the late nineteenth century Whitsun had become a fixed point in both the religious and secular
calendar as a communal celebration in which walks and processions, especially those organised by
Sunday Schools, were a common feature of religious and civic celebration, especially in the north
and midlands of England (Rosman, 2003). In Bolton, for example, cotton mills closed at
Whitsuntide from Thursday night to Monday morning with processions accompanied by temper-
ance bands in the eighteen-sixties (Boyson, 1970), while in 1871 Whit Monday was designated as
a Bank Holiday, retaining this status until 1972 when it was abandoned for a fixed-date Spring Bank
Holiday. Contemporaneously, political and social issues became embedded in the Walks as changes
of monarchy and royal celebrations were mirrored in their planning. Over time, the distinctions
between the sacred and secular became less solid. Whereas in 1838 there was concern about the
resources needed to support both celebrations for the coronation of Queen Victoria and the Whit
Walks (Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 1838), by the time of the Queen’s
Golden Jubilee in 1887 there was a harmonious integration of the religious and the secular, as
evidenced in the Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser’s report (31 May, 1887):
The great Whitsuntide demonstration of the Manchester Church of England Sunday scholars, which took
place yesterday, must be described as one of the most interesting and successful that have been held. All who
were either directly or indirectly interested in the proceedings seem this year to have thrown themselves into
the matter with greater zest than has been the case for some year’s past. The reason is not far to seek. Is it not
the Jubilee year of her Majesty, and was it not meet, therefore, that extra efforts should be put forth in order to
make the spectacle as imposing as possible?
As Roberts (2017) notes, a mid-nineteenth century transition from the traditional to the recrea-
tional civic ritual took place as many towns began to promote civic ceremony and pageantry as
a form of entertainment to create civic pride. This was true of the Manchester Whit Walks which in
Queen Victoria’s Jubilee year included several displays of loyalty, for example, banners bearing
celebratory inscriptions and the wearing of Jubilee medals by all of the school children. This is
6L. PLATT ET AL.
evidence of Roberts (2017) conclusions that processional forms in the civic setting have been
employed for various purposes from civic ritual to entertainment. Here we witness how one
procession adapted its form in order to suit the needs of the times – the boundaries between
religion and the civic evidently malleable.
We argue that the Walks have always been inextricably linked with the historical events of the
time and this is still true in the contemporary social and political landscape of urban life. Their
infrasecular nature has come into sharper focus both socially and politically in more recent years
through their embracing of a range of denominations and to an extent other faiths and belief
systems. This has been seen as a necessity for two main reasons; the decline in the participation of
the traditional Church of England Walkers and the ethnic diversification of society as a whole:
Because we’ve had the Muslim mayors as well. And they’ve joined in the hymn singing as well as taking part in
the walk. And the present Lord Mayor, he’s certainly a Christian and as well as being a member of the LGBT
community. I think that’s good because it just shows the diversity of the church. (Ronald)
This diversification of Walkers has been reflected in the participation of official dignitaries and can
also be seen in the attitudes of religious leaders as recent news reports show:
We won’t turn anyone away. While it is traditionally a Church of England celebration, it is open to any
Christian congregation to join us. It is part of community history. There are certain parishes for which there is
a historical connection, but it really is open to everyone. (Rev Canon Roy Chow, quoted in, Qureshi, 2011).
Indeed, Church of England statistics reflect this diversification of parishioners with a four-figure
percentage increase in black Christians in the Manchester and Salford districts (Council for
Christian Unity, 2014). It can be observed that in recent Walks the diversity of modern
Manchester is overtly on display.
As the Walks strive to retain their religiously motivated customs and traditions, they appear to
have become increasingly at odds with a rapidly changing political and social postmodern land-
scape, forced to compete for space both literally and symbolically. For instance, the walks have
conflicted with secular, commercial events. A newspaper article from 2011 describes how, ‘about
1,500 people from Manchester and Salford took part on the Whit Walks after the start was delayed
owing to United’s parade along Deansgate’ (Kirby, 2011). In fact, many reports of twenty-first
century Walks pick up on this tension, citing other events such as the Queens Golden Jubilee
celebrations and the Great Manchester Run as ‘giving the heart of Manchester more than a run for
its money’ (Palmer, 2003). It is telling that such competing events seen to coexist with the Whit
Walks processions and indeed, as can be seen in the case of the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations there
was a conscious decision by organisers to combine the two.
More recently, elements of the secular have infringed upon on the Walks in terms of official
public holidays. These have reflected the wavering public attitude towards the Walks whereby
increasingly Walkers and bystanders have gone away on holiday over the bank holiday weekend.
This tendency led to a brief rescheduling of the Walks to a Sunday – however the longevity of the
customary Monday date was not to be dismissed. A local person, interviewed in the Manchester
Evening News, felt that, ‘I don’t think there’s been any consultation about this. It seems like they
don’t care about the tradition at all’ (Qureshi, 2013) Soon after they were reinstated to the original
bank holiday Monday, Rev. Canon Roy Chow, organising secretary for the annual Walks, said:
Last year, it was moved because churches were finding it difficult to raise people to walk, but popular opinion
wanted it back on Monday and we had a great turnout. I think it will stay on Monday now. (Manchester
Evening News, 27 May 2014).
With so many other secular events and leisure activities on offer during public holidays people are
increasingly finding that either they are having to make a choice between attending the Whit Walks
or another event but, as the earlier analysis also highlights, people are attending the Walks alongside
or incidental to other more secular activities within the city. However, when viewing the city as an
infrasecular space we begin to notice that the religious aspects of the Walks play an important role
LEISURE STUDIES 7
in the secular nature of the city. An apt example of the merging of boundaries between different
events and belief systems occurred after the 2017 Whit procession in the week following the
Manchester Arena terror attack which took the lives of 22 people, many of whom were children.
One of the brass bands, after the procession, gathered in St Ann’s Square where a spontaneous
memorial of flowers had formed and played the hymn ‘Abide with Me’ to a socially and ethnically
mixed crowd. This event is a clear example of an infra or middle point where the secular and
religious co-exist in time and space. Further evidence, as pointed out by della Dora (2018), that
conceptual boundaries between religion and the secular needs rethought.
Conclusions
Through examining both the spatial and social/political dimensions of the Whit Walks considering
their urban setting we have demonstrated that the relationship between leisure and religion is still
salient. We contend, using the example of the Whit Walks, that leisure and religion are not always
so distinct, even in modernity. It can be argued that the continuing practice of the Whit Walks,
despite the marked decline in religion over recent decades, is due in some part to the historical
significance of this feast for working-class communities. By drawing on data from over 200 years of
news reporting plus contemporary perspectives and observations we have demonstrated that this is
a phenomenon that is by no means relegated to history. Leisure experiences here, recalling della
Dora (2018), are assemblages whereby the material, affective and temporal nature of their con-
struction are enmeshed.
The evidence suggests that such events are central to community formation and that there is
a remaining adherence to customs that cut across religious and secular spaces and experiences. This
is true both historically and in the 21
st
century where urban community life may be viewed as more
fragmentary. We contend custom is an important factor of leisure practice; as Joyce (1991) noted, it
involves informal practices and observances which regulate social and economic relationships
within and between different social groups and can be seen in the persistence of wakes and fairs.
However, as Joyce also argues, custom is not passive; rather it is an active process through which
culture is made and transformed. This process is clearly evident in the historical evolution of the
Manchester Whit Walks and the blurring of the distinction between religious and secular experi-
ences which, using della Dora’s (2018) term, can be viewed as infrasecular leisure experiences which
highlight, ‘ . . . the interstitiality of religion’s “invisible visibilities”, that is, aspects of historically
dominating religions that are so deeply embedded in a society’s collective memory, culture, values,
institutions, everyday speech, and in the landscape that they become unseen’ (Ibid: 48). In order to
understand leisure experiences in the urban landscape from both a historical and contemporary
perspective this interstitiality between the secular or civic nature of the city and the religious
experiences of those who live, work and play in these places, needs to be considered in more
depth than it has been before in leisure scholarship.
Our findings indicate that the adoption of infrasecular as a theoretical lens to leisure may be
essential in order to keep pace with the changing social, political and legislative landscape and to
meet the challenge of keeping the Whit Walks going in an environment where there are ever
competing demands on our time. In practice, religious events have often been marginalised by
a secular civic society. Indeed, participants in the Whit Walks were frustrated that as they were
a religious event, they could not access funding in the same way secular events could. To reframe
such events and practices as infrasecular opens up the possibility for such events to reclaim
importance in civic society. We recommend that that this be a consideration where religion and
leisure intersect socially and spatially. There needs to be a more fluid understanding of how the
sacred and the secular intersect, in particular in our urban environments. The Whit Walks have
persisted for over 200 and only war and, more recently, a global pandemic have halted the
procession. It could be argued that in the future, as we saw in the aftermath of the Manchester
Arena bombing mentioned above, that the spaces of religious and leisure experiences, like
8L. PLATT ET AL.
processions, needed to be examined not as distinct experiences but as temporal and relational
spaces where communities can gather. Infra- as interpreted as ‘middle’ or ‘between’ allows for
a perspective where sacred and secular are not placed as binary opposite. Infra- as in ‘below’ of
‘latent’ further allows us to attend to the invisible and unseen experiences that persist unnoticed in
our urban centres. As such, the research reveals that the infrasecular lens enables a new insight to
the dynamics of the historical spaces of leisure practice where religion remains an important
influence on leisure and that the concept merits further investigation in leisure practices where
the religious and the secular collide.
Notes
1. The Whit Walks take place in Manchester city centre but involve parishioners from both Manchester and the
neighbouring city of Salford.
2. The races at Kersal Moor were known as a place where the working classes gathered at Whitsun to partake in
drinking, gambling and other undesirable pursuits.
Disclosure of potential conicts of interest
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes on contributors
Louise Platt is an interdisciplinary researcher and Senior Lecturer in Festival Management at Manchester
Metropolitan University. She is a fellow of the Institute of Place Management and member of the Executive
Committee of the Leisure Studies Association. Her research focus is on placemaking and festivity with a particular
focus on processional forms, and experiences of festivals and leisure spaces. Her work predominantly draws on
cultural geography, dance/performance theory, and poststructural philosophy to elucidate a more fluid under-
standing of place and community using festivity as a lens. She teaches festival studies at both undergraduate and
postgraduate level and supports PhD students on festival-related topics.
Rebecca Abushena is a Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader in retail at Manchester Metropolitan University. She
has previously also worked as a researcher at Manchester Business School, where she completed her PhD. She spent
some years working in management consultancy advising organisations operating within the arts, culture and leisure
sectors. Her current research aims to combine more traditional business/marketing approaches to retail with
placemaking looking at the use of retail spaces in terms of leisure and atmosphere. She teaches on the Retail
Chartered Manager Degree Apprenticeship programme in Business and Management.
Robert Snape is Professor in Cultural History in the Centre for Worktown Studies. His principal research interest is
the socio-cultural history of leisure in Great Britain 1850-1939. His recent work is concerned the ways in which
modern social understandings of leisure were formed in social science and social work in the late 19
th
and early 20
th
centuries. This is the subject of his most recent book Leisure, Voluntary Action and Social Change in Britain 1880-
1939. He was Chair of the Leisure Studies Association 2013-17 and the principal organiser of the Association’s
‘Recording Leisure Lives’ one –day social history conferences 2008-2018.
ORCID
Louise Platt http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9063-1110
References
Beaumont, J., Eder, K., & Mendieta, E. (2020). Reflexive secularization? Concepts, processes and antagonisms of
postsecularity. European Journal of Social Theory, 23(3), 291–309.
Borsay, P. (2006). A history of leisure. The British experience since 1500. Palgrave Macmillan.
Boyson, R. (1970). The Ashworth cotton enterprise: The rise and fall of a family firm. Clarendon Press. Ms Bolton
Archives ZZ/413/1.
LEISURE STUDIES 9
Brace, C., Bailey, A. R., & Harvey, D. C. (2006). Religion, place and space: A framework for investigating historical
geographies of religious identities and communities. Progress in Human Geography, 30(1), 28–48. https://doi.org/
10.1191/0309132506ph589oa
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2019). Reflecting on reflexive thematic analysis. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and
Health, 11(4), 589–597.
Burns, J. (2013). The history and memories of the Whit Walks in and around Manchester with banners and bands.
Countryvise Ltd.
Cloke, P., & Beaumont, J. (2013). Geographies of postsecular rapprochement in the city. Progress in Human
Geography, 37(1), 27–51. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132512440208
Coffey, A. (1999). The ethnographic self: Fieldwork and the representation of identity. New Dehli and Singapore: Sage
Publications.
Council for Christian Unity. (2014). Changes in the ethnic diversity of christian populations in England between
2001-2011 North West. Council for Christian Unity. https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2017-10/
north_west.pdf
della Dora, V. D. (2018). Infrasecular geographies: Making, umaking and remaking sacred spaces. Progress in Human
Geography, 42(1), 44–71. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132516666190
Duffy, E. (1992). The stripping of the altars. Traditional religion in England 1400-1580. Yale University Press.
Dwyer, C. (2016). Why does religion matter for cultural geographers? Social & Cultural Geography, 17(6), 758–762.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2016.1163728
Entwistle, D. (2012). The Whit Walks of Hyde: Glorious spectacle, religious witness, and celebration of a custom.
Journal of Religious History, 36(2), 204–233. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9809.2011.01167.x
Estabrook, C. (2002). Ritual, space, and authority in seventeenth-century english cathedral cities. Journal of
Interdisciplinary History, 32(4), 593–620. https://doi.org/10.1162/002219502317345529
Griffin, E. (2002). Popular culture in industrializing England. The Historical Journal, 45(3), 619–635. https://doi.org/
10.1017/S0018246X02002571
Gunn, S. (2000). The public culture of the Victorian middle class. University of Manchester Press.
Habermas, J. (2008). Notes on post-secular society. New Perspectives Quarterly, 25(4), 17–29. https://doi.org/10.1111/
j.1540-5842.2008.01017.x
Heeley, J. (1986). Leisure and moral reform. Leisure Studies, 5(1), 57–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/02614368600390041
Holloway, J. (2003). Make-believe: Spiritual practice, embodiment, and sacred space. Environment & Planning A, 35
(11), 1961–1974. https://doi.org/10.1068/a3586
Holloway, J., & Valins, O. (2002). Editorial: Placing religion and spirituality in geography. Social & Cultural
Geography, 3(1), 5–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649360120114107
Hopkins, P., Kong, L., & Olson, L. (2013). Religion and place: Landscape, politics and piety. Springer.
Hunt, S. (2005). Religion and everyday life. Routledge.
Hutton, R. (1996). The stations of the sun. A history of the ritual year in Britain. Oxford University Press.
Jenkins, T. (1999). Religion in English everyday life: An ethnographic approach. New York. NY & Oxford: Berghahn
Books.
Joyce, P. (1991). Visions of the people. industrial England and the question of class 1848-1914. Cambridge University
Press.
Kirby, D. (2011). ‘Bank holiday washout as rain puts dampener on celebrations’. Manchester Evening News, 31 May.
(accessed 4/Jan/2016). Available via Manchester City Council Libraries NewsBank Record: 88053245
Kong, L. (2001). Mapping ‘new’ geographies of religion: Politics and poetics in modernity. Progress in Human
Geography, 25(2), 211–233. https://doi.org/10.1191/030913201678580485
Lenneis, V., & Agergaard, S. (2018). Enacting and resisting the politics of belonging through leisure. The debate about
gender-segregated swimming sessions targeting muslim women in Denmark. Leisure Studies, 37(6), 706–720.
https://doi.org/10.1080/02614367.2018.1497682
Leone, M. (2014). Transcendence and transgression in religious processions. Signs and Society, 2(2), 314–349. https://
doi.org/10.1086/677957
Lowerson, J., & Myerscough, J. (1977). Time to spare in Victorian England. Harvester Press.
Malcolmson, R. (1973). Popular recreations in English society 1700-1850. University Press.
Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser. (16 June 1838). Local intelligence. Image © The British
Library Board. All Rights Reserved. www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk
Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser (31 May 1887). Whitsuntide festivities. Image © The British
Library Board. All Rights Reserved. www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk
Manchester Evening News. (27 May 2014). Letters: Monday is for walks. Retrieved from: Manchester City Council
Libraries NewsBank Record: 72899285
Matless, D. (1994). Moral geography in Broadland. Ecumene, 1(2), 127–155. https://doi.org/10.1177/
147447409400100202
Moberg, M., Granholm, K., & Nynäs, P. (2012). Trajectories of post-secular complexity: An introduction. In
P. Nynas, M. Lassander, & T. Utriainen (Eds.), Post-secular society (pp. 1–25). Transaction Publishers.
10 L. PLATT ET AL.
Myerhoff, B. (1986). Life not death in Venice: Its second life. In E. Bruner & V. Turner (Eds.), The anthropology of
experience (pp. 261–286). University of Illinois Press.
Olson, E., Hopkins, P., Pain, R., & Vincett, G. (2013). Retheorizing the postsecular present: Embodiment, spatial
transcendence, and challenges to authenticity among young christians in Glasgow, Scotland. Annals of the
Association of American Geographers, 103(6), 1421–1436. https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2012.702516
Palmer, K. (2003). ‘Fun and sun for first great run’. Manchester Evening News, 26 May. Retrieved from: Manchester
City Council Libraries NewsBank Record: A20030526-5F3-EIW,0,XML,EIW
Platt, L. C., & Medway, D. (2020). Sometimes . . . sometimes . . . sometimes . . . witnessing urban placemaking from
the immanence of the middle. Space and Culture, OnlineFirst. https://doi.org/10.1177/1206331219896261
Pounds, N. J. G. (1994). The culture of the english people: Iron age to the industrial revolution. Cambridge University
Press.
Qureshi, Y. (2011). A warm welcome for us all as the Whit Walk marches on. Manchester Evening News, 1 June.
Available via Manchester City Council Libraries NewsBank. Record: 88082717
Qureshi, Y. (2013). Whit Walks move to sunday so families can jet o on holidays. Manchester Evening News. http://
www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/manchester-whit-walk-moves-sunday
-2596907 .
Reid, D. A. (2000). Playing and praying. In M. Daunton (Ed.), The Cambridge urban history of Britain volume three,
1840-1950 (pp. 745–807). Cambridge University Press.
Roberts, B. (2017). Entertaining the community: The evolution of civic ritual and public celebration, 1860–1953.
Urban History, 44(3), 444–463. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963926816000511
Rosman, D. (2003). The evolution of the english churches 1500-2000. Cambridge University Press.
Royle, E. (2012). Modern Britain. A social history 1750-2011 (3rd ed.). Bloomsbury.
Smith, D. M. (2000). Moral geographies: Ethics in a world of dierence. Edinburgh University Press.
Tse, J. K. H. (2014). Grounded theologies: ‘Religion’ and the ‘secular’ in human geography. Progress in Human
Geography, 38(2), 201–220. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132512475105
Walseth, K. (2006). Young muslim women and sport: The impact of identity work. Leisure Studies, 25(1), 75–94.
https://doi.org/10.1080/02614360500200722
Wildman, C. (2011). Religious selfhoods and the city in inter-war Manchester. Urban History, 38(1), 103–123. https://
doi.org/10.1017/S096392681100006X
LEISURE STUDIES 11
