Where it All Began

The sun shone brightly, heightening the whiteness of the stone. Summer was starting to emerge from the hope of spring and the fresh green leaves shimmered as a gentle breeze passed through them, stirring the dust from the shingle lay-by. In the relative calm of this once industrial, now somewhat neglected landscape, the peace was broken by a troupe of young boys and girls clambering from the stiffling air of the coach. Amongst this gaggle of youth was a little boy, quite short for his age, in a red cap. Not too far away was his mother, who had accompanied this school party as a parent-helper. That young boy was me, the place was the Loos Memorial at Dud Corner Cemetery, it was June 1992. This is my first memory of visiting a Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery, I was there to see the name of my Great-great Uncle Thomas Wilson as part of my school's annual pilgrimage to the Western Front battlefields.

I have been back several times since, but I will never forget that first time. It was the single most impacting experience of my life and has shaped everything that I am since. This is the power of these cemeteries, they resonate through the generations. The architecture, with its often stark contrasts between red brick and Portland stone, burns its shapes onto one's memory. Part of that power is the sense of scale, part of it is the underlying sadness. Something so vast, so permanent, that seems to have stopped time within those walls cannot fail to be impacting, but, for me, the most powerful element is the uncanny sense of home. The seamless use of architecture and horticulture creates the sense of place, that place is an eternal vision of the halcyon pre-war days. An attempt to capture something of the dappled shades of that last glorious summer before the carnage of war engulfed Europe in the darkest shadow. It is the encapsulation of the English rural idyll.

There are a number of books and websites that deal with the founding of the then Imperial War Graves Commission, not least of which being CWGC.org. I will, therefore, not dwell on this as I fear I can add no more to it than is already known. Needless to say, the project that was begun under the cloud of war and initially finished as the shadows of unrest drifted across Europe again, achieved the objective it set out to; a memorial that would ensure the remembrance of the fallen would not thin with the blood of every generation thereafter.

This post has become a slightly more embellished introduction, not my original intention, I must admit. However, I hope this post has allowed the reader to understand a little more of the direction I am coming from, even if it has not necessarily shown the direction I will be heading.

Welcome

The warmest of welcomes to anyone who has found their way onto this blog. I cannot vouch for the humour nor indeed the length and depth of each upcoming post over the coming months, however, I can for their honesty. I will be using this blog as a place to capture my thoughts, to map interests and hopefully develop both my own and the reader's understanding of the subject so that I may use it as an aide memoire in the future.

Whilst the overarching theme will be the cemeteries of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission the primary focus will be that of the architecture, with a nod towards the horticulture and the occassional daliance into other related aspects. I hope to explore the various architects, those well-known and those not so well-known, to look at influences, legacy and anything else that I have been considering.

I look forward to the journey and hope that anyone reading this takes some form of pleasure from doing so.