Benches

Benches are a long-time fascination of mine. I’m talking about benches for sitting on, the types you find in parks and gardens and other communal green spaces, not the ones for preparing food or making things on or those designed for judges.

A simple stone bench overlooking the Plaza de Armas in Cusco, Peru

A pleasing metal and wood construction, also in Cusco, Peru

Though typically simple structures made of wood and/or stone, benches can also be complex artistic creations made of many other materials, and I’ve already blogged about some of those I’ve found. During the six months I lived in Cheshire, I was a frequent visitor to Tatton Park, which has the most delightful collection of benches within its gardens.   

More comfortable that it might appear, this bench overlooks the house at Dunham Massey, in Cheshire, England

Benches for appreciating the views, overlooking the Devon town of Sidmouth and the English Channel, England

And here in Wales, in Cardiff, I was charmed by Gwen Henney’s nine Beastie Benches and others of her creation, the Rhiannon Seating triology, also crafted of carved bricks, as well as the Nina Edge-designed West Close Square terracotta benches.

From the state of Wisconsin, in the USA, benches to share with sculptures: in the picturesque town of Wittenberg and in Green Bay

Before Google+ was closed down, I was a long-time and very active member of the photographic community on that platform, and one of the themes I enjoyed contributing to was #BenchSaturday. The idea was to post photos of benches that were interesting in themselves or were located in interesting places.

Colourful benches in the vibrant surroundings of the Majorelle Gardens in Marrakech, Morocco

A creative Polynesian-themed bench in Auckland's Karangahape Road, New Zealand

The photos I’ve included here are just a few examples from the hundreds I posted on Google+ over the years and, be warned, there will be future blogs on other interesting benches I find. I hope that next time you sit on a bench, you might appreciate better its maker and their skills.

More benches with views: above, on top of the extinct volcanic cone of Mt Richmond and, below, a view over the city centre from another volcano, Mt Eden, both benches in Auckland, New Zealand

Shaftesbury: crumbs!

Not being English, I didn’t understand the significance of Shaftesbury’s Gold Hill. A quick google revealed that Shaftesbury had been founded as a fortified settlement (a burgh) way back in 880 by King Alfred the Great, and that the picture-postcard cottages of Gold Hill had been built around the 17th century.

But it was bread-making firm Hovis and now-world-famous film director Ridley Scott who forever implanted Gold Hill in the psyche of the English when they chose this location for their 1973 television advertisement. The ad (you can see it here) was subsequently voted ‘Britain's favourite television ad’, and people’s visions of Shaftesbury were forever linked with the image of that young boy pushing his bicycle up Gold Hill.

Gold Hill has also featured in episodes of those classic English comedies The Two Ronnies and Only Fools and Horses, in films, and on the covers of books – heck, it even has its own website! 

This modern bench is very well placed and a rather beautiful work of art.

As you can see, the apparently magnificent views of the beautiful Dorset countryside were somewhat obscured on the day I visited but I rather liked the evocative atmosphere created by the fog. It gave more of a sense of the hill’s long history.

At the bottom, looking back up.

My guide promised me a giant Hovis loaf but it was nowhere to be seen – apparently it was getting a bit mouldy around the edges and needed re-crusting, as this article explains.

Cardiff art: the Beastie Benches

Cardiff is blessed with some rather lovely public artworks, none more so than the Beastie Benches, a series of nine carved brick benches that can be found in the Britannia Park and Quay area that runs along two sides of Roath Basin at Cardiff Bay.

These are the work of Welsh sculptor Gwen Heeney, a ceramics expert who specialises in working with brick. Her raw materials, the terracotta bricks, came from Dennis of Ruabon, the very same brick and tile company that supplied the decorative panels for the Bay’s iconic Pierhead building more than a hundred years ago.

The Beastie Benches are aptly named. The Beasts were inspired by the mythical creatures brought to life in ‘The Ballad of the Long Legged Bait’, one of the most well-known of famous Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’s poems. It’s a very long poem, too long to reproduce in full in this post, but here’s a link if you fancy a read. 

The poem’s subject matter has been much discussed by critics since Thomas’s early death in 1953 at just 39 years of age. With allusions to literary and scientific works and the Bible, with plays on words and multiple layers of meaning, it may describe Thomas’s own voyage through life, it could be about a series of sexual experiences and their consequences, or it may relate to the search for salvation through the mortification of the flesh.

Heeney has taken lines and phrases from the poem and allowed her imagination to transform these into the mythical creatures that now provide a welcome place to sit on a sunny day. The names of the benches are fascinating enough in themselves: The lured fish under the foam; Sing and howl through sand and anemone; Thrown to the sea in the shell of a girl; Venus lies star-struck in her wound; Bird after dark; and the laughing fish; In the continent of a fossil; Turns the moon-chained and water-wound Metropolis of fishes; and There is nothing left of the sea.

I dare you to sit on one of these and not be inspired to write your own poem or paint a vivid picture. 

The lured fish under the foam

Sing and howl through sand and anemone

Thrown to the sea in the shell of a girl

Venus lies star-struck in her wound

Bird after dark (It seems the bird has been the subject of some after-dark shenanigans!)

and the laughing fish

In the continent of a fossil

Turns the moon-chained and water-wound Metropolis of fishes

There is nothing left of the sea