Last night, David and I met for a recording session at The Angel of the North. It was a beautiful evening and there were a lot of visitors on the site. We are making field recordings across the seasons of the year, and this was our recording for the sounds of Spring. For each season, we have recorded the sounds of nature on the site – from the autumn dawn chorus, through the high winds of winter’s Storm Babet, to the springtime ambience of early evening. We have also recorded the interior resonances of The Angel at the different times and seasons, taking ‘readings’ from the north, east, south, and west faces of the sculpture.
We usually use the contact microphone to record the resonances of The Angel, but David brought to this recording session a new recording device – the geophone.
Photo credit: Anne Whitehead
Usually used to pick up underground vibrations, David placed the geophone at the four points around The Angel, which, as usual, varied in their pitch and tone. The geophone had a magnet embedded within it so it attached more securely to The Angel than the contact microphone. David used both recording devices, and it was possible to switch from one to the other through the headphones, attending to the differences between them. The photograph at the top of this post shows me listening to the geophone on the north side of The Angel (the front of the sculpture). The sound was more airy and ethereal than in the other recordings we have done. There was little wind and heavy traffic so the resonances would have been formed by sound travelling through the ground from the motorway, rather than wind echoing down from the wings.
Photo Credit: Anne Whitehead
As we stood behind The Angel recording the resonances from its south side, the structure contracted, producing the booming noise that I had heard on a previous visit. As before, the sound resonated through my body and it travelled up through The Angel and along its wings. Even though both the contact microphone and the geophone were recording at the time, David felt that the unexpected volume was most likely to be picked up as distortion by them, although it may have been captured by the field microphone that was recording beneath the west wing of The Angel.
The trees on The Angel’s west side, including the memorial site, were filled with birdsong and we set up a field microphone facing in the direction of the trees to capture these sounds. Before I arrived, David had recorded the rustle of the leaves that are now on the trees, and I walked down to the memorial with the field microphone to try to record the blackbird that was singing from their highest branches.
Photo credit: Anne Whitehead
As we recorded, the sun gradually lowered in the sky and the shadows lengthened across the field. I took the photograph above to document the long shadow cast by The Angel, and it speaks more broadly to the project. I have described the memorial in the trees as standing in the shadow of The Angel, and this photograph gives a sense of the sculpture reaching out across the site, its wings embracing everything that lies in their radius.
Most of the posts in this blog focus on the memorial tributes that are left in the trees, which stand immediately below The Angel of the North. A variety of notes and trinkets are regularly either suspended from the branches of the trees or placed beneath them. Less often, memorial objects are also left on, or at, the sculpture itself, and it is these tributes that form the subject of today’s post.
The construction of The Angel means that a series of enclosed ‘shelves’ is created where the ribbing between sections meets, and these alcoves are readily accessible at the height of The Angel’s calves. That these ‘shelves’ can be easily reached is attested to by the layers of grafitti that are inscribed there – another way in which visitors to the site leave traces of their presence behind. When I visit, I often walk round The Angel first to check whether any objects have been left there, before proceeding down to the stand of trees.
I have written in a previous post about the difficulty of being able to tell whether an object is a memorial tribute, or if it is something discarded, or perhaps something found that has been placed there in the hope that it will be reunited with its owner. I observed that this problem of identification increases on the perimeter of the memorial site in the trees, and the same issue arises when faced with those objects that have been left at or on The Angel. It can be impossible to determine sometimes why a particular object might have been left there. In this post, I therefore focus on four tributes that I believe have been left with memorial intent, even if I do not know who or what is being commemorated by them.
The first tribute is a cap and a single red rose, which were left on adjacent ‘shelves’ on The Angel (pictured above). The rose had a card attached, but I could not see if any message was written on it and I followed my usual practice of leaving the objects undisturbed. It was tempting to read the grafitti behind the objects – the ‘Jacob was here’ behind the rose and the series of three kisses inscribed above the cap – as accompaniments to the objects, but it is more likely that their placing was either accidental, or that the person, or people, who left the objects there felt that they formed appropriate backdrops for their tributes – although the accompanying image behind the rose seemed to discount that theory.
Photo credit: Anne Whitehead
The rose was more ephemeral than the cap, and it had disappeared by the time of my next visit. The cap had been moved to the memorial site in the trees and it was hanging on a branch of the oak tree near the entrance to the copse. Over my next few visits, the cap changed position in the memorial site a number of times. I was unsure whether it was being moved by the person who had originally left it there, or if other visitors were positioning and repositioning it across the site. I found that this degree of mobility often characterised objects that were left on or at The Angel; much more so than with the objects that were left in the trees, which tended to be moved by the wind but not by other visitors.
Photo credit: Anne WhiteheadPhoto credit: Anne Whitehead
The second tribute also makes use of adjacent ‘shelves’ on The Angel, this time to place two bouquets of flowers, which were seemingly purchased on the way to the site and with the shop label partially removed. One of the bouquets is accompanied by one of the wild flowers that grows on the edge of the field on which The Angel stands. The next time I visited, there was no sign of these flowers; these seemingly quite spontaneous tributes are often ephemeral in nature. These two bouquets were left on The Angel, but it is more common to find them leaning against The Angel’s feet, at the front or side of the sculpture.
Photo credit: Anne Whitehead
The third tribute that was left on the ‘shelves’ of the ribbing was a pair of plaster-cast wings. I spotted them as soon as I arrived, because they had been placed on the eastern side of The Angel, visible from the path that leads from the car park. Occupying a single ‘shelf’, the wings had been carefully positioned to echo but not to touch each other, and other visitors, like me, were looking at them but leaving them undisturbed.
Photo credit: Anne Whitehead
When I returned the following week, I could see that the wings were no longer on their original ‘shelf’. Walking round to the west side of The Angel, however, I found both of the wings positioned on adjacent shelves, and arranged vertically to form a different kind of pairing.
Photo credit: Anne Whitehead
Once again, I had no way of knowing whether the wings had been moved by those who had originally left them on The Angel, or whether subsequent visitors had altered their positioning and their placement. The movement from east to west had shifted the wings from sunrise to sunset, and I was tempted to find some meaning in this, even as I was aware that it was most likely coincidental. On my following visit, the wings had disappeared, and, even though I looked for them in the trees over succeeding visits, there was no further sign of them. This disappearance of the object was unusual, unless it was itself of a more ephemeral nature: it was more common that a tribute left on The Angel would turn up in the trees, if it was no longer visible at the sculpture itself.
The fourth tribute left on The Angel was a small, artificial candle. Smaller than the other objects, it had been positioned on The Angel’s north side, where the ribbing is narrower and the ‘shelves’ correspondingly smaller. There was no accompanying note or message, although its memorial purpose seemed clear. There was something touching in the contrast of scale between The Angel and the diminutive candle; something too, perhaps, in the way in which The Angel seemed to shelter the candle’s tiny flame and to offer it protection. I thought of The Angel, unlit at night, forming a vast shadowy presence, and I wondered if this solar candle would then illuminate a tiny scrap of the surrounding dark. There was something of the altar about this tribute; the positioning of the candle transforming the domestic ‘shelf’ into something with a more sacred resonance.
Photo credit: Anne Whitehead
The placing of objects at or on The Angel is facilitated by the design of the sculpture itself, which, as I have noted, forms ‘shelves’ of varying depths onto which the tributes can be placed. It is nevertheless striking that the memorial tributes are more commonly left in the nearby trees rather than at The Angel itself. This might be due to practical considerations – objects left here are more exposed, both to the weather and to other visitors, and so are often moved or disappear. Objects left at The Angel accordingly tend to be ephemeral and disposable in nature – tributes such as flowers, or a candle. The exceptions to this – the cap and the plaster wings – were subsequently repositioned, whether by the same visitor/s or others, with as much apparent thought and care as when they had originally been placed there.
Why, then, do the trees rather than The Angel seem to have a gravitational pull, such that even objects placed on The Angel seem to end up there? One factor certainly seems to be the shelter that they afford from the elements, especially the force of the wind. But the trees also offer shelter from other visitors, who venture less frequently into the copse, and are less likely to disturb what they find there. Leaving a memorial tribute on or at The Angel is a more public act, even if it is conducted when nobody else is there. The memorials in the trees constitute tributes that are public and private, and that speak not only to The Angel, but also to the community of other memorial objects that they join, and by which they are surrounded.
This post forms part of a monthly series that documents the plants growing at The Angel of the North through a series of cyanotypes.
In my March post I noted the arrival of Spring, with the daffodils in flower under the trees that form the memorial garden at The Angel of the North. Although some of these daffodils are still blooming, I turn my attention for the month of April to the fern-like foliage of two other plants that grow on the Angel site, and that will come into flower in the summer months: yarrow (the feathery foliage of which is depicted above), and tansy (a serrated frond of which is shown below). Both of these plants thrive on disturbed ground, such as roadsides and waste land, so it is unsurprising that they are growing on the former pit site where The Angel stands. The more delicate yarrow, with its clusters of small white flowers from June to August, can be found in the field in front of The Angel. The compact golden buttons of the tansy can be seen there from July to October, and its flowers also line the path that leads up out of the trees towards The Angel.
In addition to thriving in the same kind of conditions, yarrow and tansy are also linked by having been used for medicinal purposes from the time of the ancient Greeks. This medicinal association is reflected in their names: yarrow’s Latin name, Achillea millefolium, connects it to the warrior Achilles, who was said to have applied the plant to the wounds of his bleeding soldiers; while tansy’s common name is derived from the ancient Greek word for immortality (Athanasia), because in Greek mythology Zeus gave the shepherd Ganymede a drink of tansy to make him immortal. Folk names for these plants also gesture to their healing properties. Yarrow is variously known as soldiers’ woundwort, staunch grass, blood wort, and herb militaris – names that reflect its historical (and military) use to stop bleeding. Tansy is also called bitter buttons, referring to its tartness when drunk as a tincture to ease digestive problems.
Photo credit: Anne Whitehead
In addition to staunching wounds, yarrow was also added to ointments, due to its soothing and anti-inflammatory properties. It was a popular infusion for colds, and it was known to lower blood pressure and to relieve indigestion. Tansy likewise had a range of uses, including the treatment of fevers and of sores. However, the plant can be toxic if too much is used, or if there is an existing allergy to it; BBC presenter Sue Perkins experienced tansy poisoning on the documentary Supersizers . . . Go Restoration, when she sampled an historical recipe in which the plant would have been used.
Because of its medicinal properties, yarrow became associated with good luck and protection, and it was pinned to cradles to guard newborn babies against harm. Tansy’s ability to repel insects meant that it was often placed in the coffin with the dead to help preserve and protect the corpse before burial. In Yorkshire, biscuits flavoured with tansy and caraway seeds were traditionally served at funerals.
The foliage of these plants is easily overlooked before they come into flower, but the distinctive fern-like fronds that are visible at this time of year act as reminders of these resilient plants, as well as having their own delicate beauty. The plants’ long association with healing, the dead, and protection gives them a particular resonance in the context of this project’s interest in the memorial garden that is located at the feet of The Angel, and it feels apt that they grow amid the grasses there, even if they largely pass unnoticed.
