A Seat to Remember

Atop the grassy mound to the right of the 18th hole of the Old Course sit seven benches, invisible beneath the bodies of vitamin-D-deprived St Andrews residents on a sunny day. Faces tilted toward the sky, the students fail to notice the sun-warmed gold plaques pressing insistently into their shoulders and backs. It is not the people who these A6 brass frames immortalise, however, that are requesting attention, but those who commissioned them. The plaques reflect the blue light of the sunset’s reflection over West Sands; sitting side by side with those who they are mourning once more, watching the light fade over the ever-shifting Sands, you can understand the choice of location for a memorial. 

On a gloomy February day, I read each inscription, curious about who the community of St Andrews and Fife had chosen to memorialise in this auspicious spot. They range from prosaic to compact in length — some immortalising not only the lost people, but also significant connections to the town. One inscription writes of a man “for whom the reality of St Andrews surpassed even in his dreams.” Dedicated by his “widow and daughters,” this California native was given a view over the town he loved, even in death. Touching and perhaps bordering on haunting, his connection to place, rather than the homeland where his family still live, is what survives him. 

Owing to the beautiful outlook, only recently marred by the car park and the concrete pathways, another inscription references the “happy holidays” to which St Andrews provided a backdrop. Others print the names of the deceased, “sadly missed, fondly remembered.” These are not meant to be read, necessarily, but function the same way as gravestones — often with a date of birth and death — informative to the last. The claim to these benches is less obvious in the simpler inscriptions; perhaps they represent locals who do not question the suitability of their plaques, or those who saved their ruminations for a more private resting place. 

The contextualisation of these life-markers is key to their profundity — the commemorated individuals become part of the landscape for all passers-by, the same way they fill the landscape for those who knew them, and survive them. Feeling the grooves of the plaques, tracing the names and the scuffed, scratched edges with my finger, the connection to these people, mourners and deceased alike, is unavoidable. For those who wish to remember their happy memories and the joy that St Andrews brought their departed relatives, the physicality of these plaques is a crucial element of the mourning process. Not only do they continue to haunt the scene, but the sturdiness of their immortalisation a

gainst salt, sun, sand, and wind protects their memory, maybe even more effectively than they could have been protected in life. 

While these benches spotlight the everlasting importance of these individuals to their communities, bench plaques can also create a sense of collective reflection. Literature, often canonical works by Shakespeare or Chaucer, is frequently used as part of an inscription. A plaque in Polzeath, Cornwall, features the famous lines from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Ancient Mariner: “he prayeth well, who loveth well, both man and bird and beast.” This inscription is universally accessible both in its literal meaning — the weaving of “man and bird and beast” as similarly moral and existential creatures — but also in the choice of a psalm-like quote that rolls with perfect rhythm. Dedicated “in memory of his brother,” C.F Chase’s now faded plaque has lingered in my mind from the moment I first read it in the summer of 2022. Bench inscriptions, neatly fitted at viewpoints, bus stops, or reading spots in parks, have a quietly visceral power behind them — one which answers the ceaseless drumbeat of our species’ desire to remember, remember, remember.

Photo courtesy of Emma-Ingram Johnson