A spiritualist, mystic, historian and lifelong collector of antiquities, J. S. M. Ward (18851949) embodied the cultural turmoil of an age of collapsing empires, religious fragmentation and world war. The Abbey Folk Park he started in 1934 at New Barnet, north of London, was an innovative history museum where Wards interest in esoteric heritage, world cultures and the occult attracted much attention. Unfairly disgraced in a sensational court case...