Exhibition honours communities’ celebrated champs Homage to local heroes
Whether they’re national stars or extraordinary ordinary people, communities love to celebrate their local heroes.
Now, a new exhibition is set to showcase the shrines and statues that commemorate the local boys and gals who’ve done good.
Historic England asked members of the public to nominate the best memorials in their area. The chosen ones will feature in an exhibition in London called Immortalised: The People Loved, Left and Lost in Our Landscape.
Here, we look at just some of the touching tributes to neighbourhood heroes across England…
Cross Bones Graveyard, Southwark, London
A tribute to “the outcast dead”, it marks the unconsecrated burial ground of medieval prostitutes nicknamed Winchester Geese.
In the 12th century, the Bishop of Winchester let them work on his land, and taxed their brothels, but would not grant them a Christian burial in sacred ground.
The site was used for 15,000 pauper burials and closed in 1853.
After years of campaigning, it reopened in 2015 as a community garden and memorial.
The walls of Watford Workhouse
Etchings on the bricks on the walls of the former Watford Workhouse commemorate some of the inmates who died there.
Their names are shown, and sometimes the dates when they died – probably the only grave markers they have.
Built in the 1830s, the workhouse held up to 100 inmates.
The Beatle bench, Merseyside
A bench in a small graveyard in a cemetery in Huyton, Merseyside, commemorates Stuart Sutcliffe, the original bassist for The Beatles.
Sutcliffe had left the group to concentrate on studying art when he died in Germany aged 21 in 1962.
He suffered a brain haemor- rhage and passed away in the ambulance on his way to hospital in Hamburg. The bench, bought by a fan, was erected in 2015.
Rik Mayall mural, Essex
Comedian and star of The Young Ones, Rik Mayall died in June 2014, aged just 56. This 20ft mural was painted on the side of the Harlow Playhouse theatre in his home town of Harlow, Essex, by artist Dave Nash.
Dolly Peel statue, South Shields
Dolly was a Victorian fishwife, smuggler and protector of local sailors.
During the Napoleonic Wars, when her husband and son were press-ganged into serving in the Royal Navy, Dolly sneaked on board their ship.
She began nursing sick and wounded sailors and, once discovered, was allowed to stay on board.
Dolly was so respected that her husband and son were released from the Navy and exempted from future press-ganging. The statue in her native South Shields was unveiled in 1987.
Cracker Packers statue, Carlisle
Cracker Packers was the affectionate nickname for generations of female workers at the former Carr’s biscuit factory in Caldewgate, Carlisle.
The bronze statue – unveiled earlier this year – features two women workers, one from 1910 and one from the present day, standing on a Carr’s Table Water Biscuit. At its height, the factory employed 3,000 – mainly female – workers.
Womanhood window, All Saints Church, Cambridge
This stained glass piece was commissioned by John Murrish in memory of his wife, Kate Louisa, who was a Sunday school teacher at the church.
Designed and created by the Scottish artist Douglas Strachan in 1944, it is a tribute to women.
The piece honours women’s wartime achievements, celebrating those who displayed compassion, charity and bravery.
Xylophone man plaque, Nottingham
Frank Robinson, below, was an eccentric street entertainer who played a child’s xylophone – very poorly – outside the city’s C&A store.
When he died in 2004, aged 73, Frank was so badly missed that locals clubbed together for a memorial. Unveiled in 2005, the plaque reads: “He played his xylophone here for fifteen years, bringing a smile to the faces of the people of Nottingham”.
The Immortalised exhibition opens in London on August 30. See historicengland. org.uk/immortalised.