IN-PERSON: Prague – Section A

Abstract

What happens when heritage is dislocated from any geographical logic, but physical space co-creates meaning with the monumental interventions in that space? The National Memorial Arboretum in Alrewas, Staffordshire, intended as a national centre of remembrance in Great Britain, offers a perfect case study to explore those questions. The project began with ‘no money, no land, no staff and no trees’, now, the 150-acre site has grown to encompass nearly 400 monuments and 25,000 trees, attracting over 300,000 visitors each year. Uniformed service is divorced from the geographical specificity of commemoration enacted by local communities after both World Wars. The Arboretum intentionally sets out to counter-balance the dominance of the capital as the location for national remembrance. Its circumstantial development also leads a random juxtaposition of monuments: the story thus told is thus cumulative and often bespoke. The contributions of war memorials to heritage sites and to cultural heritage more broadly derive from their visual, material or functional characteristics, from people, individual or collective; from parallel sites however distant, from cultural representations and evolving emphases in History. Through the condensation of so many monuments in one space, the Arboretum suggests the importance of juxtaposition, of the physical as well as the abstract in creating associative meanings. Based on the archives of the Arboretum and of the feet, this paper explores the role of place in heritage through a site which deliberately and overtly distanced itself from the British heritage sites of war remembrance.