In a scrubby copse of alder trees near one of north-east England’s busiest roads and in the shadow of one its most famous landmarks, the Angel of the North, is a spontaneous, secret garden of memories. An academic is on a mission to find out why.
“I’m interested in how objects and places help people, in terms of grief,” says Prof Anne Whitehead. “What significance do the objects here have? What is it about this site that has drawn them to leave things here? Did they come here with the person they are remembering? Is it because of the Angel? Is it because they feel the Angel represents the region?”
Whitehead is speaking to the Guardian on a chilly November morning at Antony Gormley’s 25-year-old statue in Gateshead.
The unofficial memorial area has developed over many years but has largely gone under the radar. Most people would not have a clue it is there.
On the one side there is the constant thrum of vehicle noise from the A1, just metres away. On the other side, the Angel towers above you.
You can walk through the trees and see photographs, folded and unfolded notes, straggles of ribbon, baubles, garlands, plastic butterflies, artificial flowers, weather-ravaged stuffed toys, empty bottles of a loved one’s favourite tipple, a child’s football shirt – each of them their own memory and story.
Whitehead, a professor of modern and contemporary literature at Newcastle University, lives locally and started taking walks to the Angel during lockdown. It was then she spotted the memorials and became fascinated and intrigued.
“It is quite an unusual memorial in that it does seem to be a response to the Angel, it is not marking the site where something happened,” she says.
“It does have the feel of a roadside memorial because it is, obviously, between two roads and you can hear the traffic all of the time. But it’s not marking an accident, each person is marking their own personal thing … there is a communal aspect to it.
“At the same time some of the trees are claimed by and for individuals, so it’s a mix of things. The site also appears to have been created and added to by both local people who are presumably visiting regularly, and others from further away, “almost on a pilgrimage”.
“The other thing I’ve heard and would love to know if anyone knows any more, is that it originally came into being as a baby loss memorial, that there used to be woollen booties on the trees and it has expanded from there.
“If anyone knows anything about the history, how it first emerged, I would love to hear from them.”
The Angel of the North, with its 54m (175ft) wingspan, is one of the world’s best known examples of contemporary public art.
It is also a memorial itself in that it sits on what was once a pit and so reminds us of the coalminers who worked there, in the dark, for 200 years. Gormley has said this is one of three functions of the Angel. The second is “to grasp hold of the future, expressing our transition from the industrial to the information age” and the last “to be a focus for our hopes and fears – a sculpture is an evolving thing”.
Whitehead is working with sound recordist David de la Haye, who plans to record the memorial across the seasons of the year, as well as the sound of the Angel itself.
These recordings will be combined with interviews to create a work that will play in the Arches Sound Project at Newcastle University in July 2024. The project is funded by the Catherine Cookson Foundation.
Whitehead, who researches how we tell stories of loss and grief, wants to hear from people although she also has her own thoughts.
Standing at the Angel feels almost spiritual. “It’s a presence, it’s got a power,” Whitehead says. “The way it is situated, the way Gormley deliberately tilted the wings a little bit so it is like an embrace as you approach it.
“I think it is people placing objects in that embrace … it’s in the shadow of the wings, in the embrace of the Angel.”
If you have left an item at the site, you can contact Whitehead on anne.whitehead@ncl.ac.uk and she will be happy to tell you more about the project.
