Ban benches and people will find another way to honour the dead

It was one of those never to be forgotten summer days: the sun high in the sky, a small tuft of cloud, boats on the horizon, a hum of insects, wild flowers everywhere. But as we rounded the path, I was exhausted. We’d walked miles along Jersey’s cliff path and I needed a break. Then there it was – a wooden memorial bench, complete with a small plaque dedicated to a couple who had loved that spot and had enjoyed similar summer days, looking out across the sea.

I’ve always liked memorial benches. Their recognition of those who have walked the same way before me is deeply affecting. The messages they bear – from a husband or a widow, remembering the times they spent together, or from children to the parents who first took them to a beauty spot – all have a poignancy.

They create a connection with people from other times, just as one finds a link, in listening to music or reading old books, to those who loved Schubert and Beethoven or Dickens and Shakespeare in their times. They are reminders that the past is not always a foreign country; people there shared the same pleasures and felt similar emotions.

Yet according to Charles Alluto, head of the National Trust for Jersey, these benches, which are found all over Britain in beauty spots from formal gardens to woodlands to coastal paths, are a blight that is ruining the very beauty of the places that the people remembered had once loved. “It’s absolutely crucial,” said Mr Alluto, “that they do not become graveyards.”

Although that deadening effect is not something that has ever struck me about memorial benches, I do have some sympathy. Jersey is a small island and there’s clearly a problem with space. Even on the mainland there have been concerns, with some local authorities suggesting that benches have a plaque for five, 10 or 20 years, enabling them to be used again, instead of new seats being installed. And why not have more than one plaque per bench, given how small most of the metal signs tend to be?

Perhaps some judicious thinking is necessary in very bench-rich areas. But on the whole these benches are a joy, not a blight. Too many? It depends how they’re used: in Kew Gardens, one of my favourite places, there are dozens upon dozens, all regularly occupied. If you come upon 15 on a beachfront and all are taken, they’re hardly superfluous.

Humanity has always found ways to honour the dead, whether it is a vast tomb like Napoleon’s in Les Invalides or a simple grave in a country churchyard. And I suspect the bench has become increasingly popular as burials become rarer due to shortage of space and costs. Many of us are now cremated, but few want to visit a garden alongside a crematorium and its chimney. There is none of the grandeur of a cemetery or the simple loveliness of a churchyard.

Instead, people opt for a bench in a beauty spot. It’s rather like the fashion for weddings in historic houses. It suits people who are not looking for a location linked to religion, but is far more splendid than the municipal alternative, be it the register office for a wedding or the crematorium garden for a memorial.

Town halls and the National Trust can ban the benches, but people will find some other way to remember those they have loved. The human desire to honour the dead, and for beauty, won’t cease.