Memorials without location: creating heritage places

Abstract

Moaz Azaryahu has considered the ways in which a tragic event can lead to the public adoption and redefinition of a place (Azaryahu 1996). In the aftermath of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the importance of identification with place was clear. Fortunately, such defining occasions are rare, but when they do occur, the interaction of place and event is not always so readily identified. In late August 1997, the United Kingdom seemed for once truly united in an extraordinary outpouring of grief for the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. The suddenness and unexpected nature of the event left many commentators paralysed. Despite a full week of saturation coverage in the media, the lasting impres sion was of the remarkable way in which the event mobilized the public. Research carried out by the Department of Social Sciences at Nottingham Trent University found that the death and funeral of the Princess of Wales had a profound psychological im pact on the public; indeed, a third of the subjects interviewed 'showed symptoms indicating post traumatic stress' (Shevlin et al 1997, 1468). This cre ated a shared memory of significance, but is it possible to capture that feeling in a continuation of the remem brance? Azaryahu describes a 'process of sacralis ation' that occurred in Tel Aviv, creating a shrine of the location of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin (Azaryahu 1996, 501). This event was securely located in place, occurring in a public square that was already dedicated to events of nation-building. This contrasts with the death of Diana, which produced powerful, but largely unlocated, shared memories. Can we hold and commemorate such memories, or is the formaliz ation around a sanctified location inevitable? Azaryahu explores the developing practice of creat ing spontaneous memorials at the scene of tragic events. However, in the case of Diana, death had occurred abroad; this was an event without a specific location at home. A place had to be found for the tributes, separated from the actual events. The first pictures shown were of flowers placed at the royal palaces in London: Kensington Palace, understand ably, as the home of Diana, to which she would return on her last journey; more surprising, perhaps, the unoccupied Buckingham Palace. But what of the other choices? Althorp House, where Diana grew up but had not lived for many years, has a clear, if removed, connection. The flowers also piled up in cathedrals and churches, outside civic buildings and on war memorials, even on roadside verges outside cemeter ies and other public places. People sought places in their local area to create memorials. In Ruddington, Nottinghamshire, a simple vase of white flowers backed by silver paper replaced the usual collection of children's toys in the window of the Post Office; the local branch of the British Legion unlocked the gates that normally bar access to the village war memorial, so that flowers could be placed on the steps. Of all these locations, the war memorial is perhaps the most perplexing choice. There may seem little connection between the death of a young woman in a car crash and the commemoration of the loss of young men in war. Most of our war memorials date from the slaughter of the First World War, although many were rededicated to include the sacrifice of the Second World War. Despite the indiscriminate nature of bombing and the involvement of women in war ser vice, most war memorials remain resolutely male and military. So why seek out such locations to commem orate the individual, peacetime death of a woman? The answer seems to lie in the nature of the experience of grief and commemoration. There is a striking connection with the original purpose of the First World War memorials, as explored by Catherine Moriarty. These monuments were consciously cre ated to provide a location at which the many bereaved families might focus their mourning, in the absence of the physical remains of their loved ones, many of whom were lost forever in the mud of the battlefields (Moriarty 1995). It may be extending the connection too far to suggest that people sought out these sites to mourn the absent Diana, but the war memorials provide a location where, for generations, people have gathered for shared commemoration. The people who left flowers for Diana may be