One of the greatest pleasures afforded by city life is completely free.
You don’t need to work hard, go into debt or struggle in any way and it’s available to everyone, prince or pauper, man or mouse. It’s the park bench – a temporary escape from grind, bustle and the consumerist race.
My own favourite benches line the main walkway in Kensington Gardens. I eat my cheese sandwich on one at lunch, doze, read, observe the habits of the exotic ducks, ponder the imponderables, and consider the majesty of the city around me. A public bench means freedom.
Park benches are romantic, anonymous zones. We imagine spies meeting on them, and lovers.
They are refuges. We don’t like sharing them with strangers. Bench etiquette determines that you should sit on an occupied bench only if there are no empty benches available. If you do, sit as far away as possible from the other person or people, in case they think you’re a weirdo.
The benches in Soho Square have arm rests in the middle of the bench, not just at the end - you can sit down next to someone without their thinking you're a creep. It also means that all bench space is used; very efficient.
And don’t you love reading the inscriptions? One bench-lover, the writer Stephen Emms, wandered round the 475 benches on Hampstead Heath in 2013, collecting inscriptions. Some were jokey: ‘ “THEY COULD DO WITH A BENCH HERE”, LEWIS GREIFER 1915–2003’.
Most celebrated slowing down, contemplation or peace: ‘May this bench bring peace to all who rest on it’.
A tour of bench inscriptions includes the one on the memorial bench to Kirsty McColl in London’s Soho Square: ‘Kirsty McColl 1959-2000’, with an echo of one of her songs – ‘One Day I’ll Be Waiting There, No Empty Bench in Soho Square’.
How would you go about getting a memorial bench? Local councils run schemes. The average charge is around £1,200, though this varies widely. In St Ives, you can get a memorial bench complete with inscription for £1,000. In London’s Holland Park, you’re talking £1,135. On Hampstead Heath, the charge is £2,500 for a 20-year term. Stockport Council charges £1,255. while in Edinburgh you’d need £4,805.
A bench in a snooty royal park such as St James’s Park will set you back a whopping £10,000. Islington Council, true to its motto of ‘For a more equal future’, charges the lowest price in London: a mere £800.
A cheaper option is to bung a plaque on an existing bench. St Ives Council charges £102 for this service.
The benches come mostly from Essex-based street-furniture masters Branson Leisure Ltd. They’re made of iroko, a teak-like hardwood from West Africa, or oak. To buy a bench for your own garden would cost £450 upwards, depending on size. How I long to visit the workshops at Branson Leisure Ltd. They could inscribe ‘A mouse loved to sit here and do nothing’ on my memorial bench.
I love the classic wooden-park-bench design. Lutyens tried to improve on it with a high back, but in my view failed.
But let’s be open to groovy modern benches. It’s also good to see that the public bench is enjoying a renaissance as a place for creative expression. The London Festival of Architecture runs an annual competition where artists design a public bench, which is then made and installed.
In New York, home of the famous bench in Woody Allen’s Manhattan, sculptor Mark Gibian was commissioned to create three works for the esplanade in TriBeCa. According to the New York Times, they are ‘made from steel pipes that have been rolled, notched and welded’. Stockholm recently saw the Superbenches project, where ten designers were invited to create benches for a park, the Kvarnbacken.
Benches mean liberty, time out and reflection. ‘We spend our life, it’s ours, trying to bring together in the same instant a ray of sunshine and a free bench,’ wrote Samuel Beckett in Texts for Nothing.
It’s customary to complain and moan about local councils. But we should honour them for installing and maintaining these beautiful egalitarian thrones of peace and felicity.
