Historic England to record memorials to the less known

Memorials to those whose names never left more than the lightest impression on history, commemorated by paintings on walls, plaques on park benches, or a posy of flowers left on tombstones worn into illegibility, are to be recorded in a project by Historic England.

The Immortalised project, which launches on Monday, will involve the public in recording not just the memorials, but the local ceremonies and rituals associated with them, including the flowers left every year on Alan Turing’s birthday at the statue in Manchester honouring the scientist.

Flowers also appear every year at the foot of Oliver Cromwell’s statue in Westminster and nearby at the gates of the Banqueting House in Whitehall where Charles I was executed.

 Contemporary memorials already noted by the researchers for Historic England include the shrines that invariably spring up within hours of a fatal accident or terrorist attack, and an installation made of spoons on a wall at Mount Pleasant in London believed to commemorate dead heroin users.

A YouGov survey for Historic England, as part of the project, suggests that one in seven woman and one in 10 men have created some form of memorial themselves.

Historical monuments include a 19th-century statue in a Dorset marketplace to an 18th-century woman, Ruth Pearce, who, according to local legend, cheated a trader, then exclaimed when challenged that God might strike her dead if she was in the wrong – and was promptly killed by lightning.

Source: theguardian