The Work

To get the best chance of marking the original location of Charlotte’s grave, I will of course need many markers with which to mark possible grave locations. Each will contain a label inscribed with fragments of the story of her murder as described in contemporary newspaper accounts; grave locations will therefore be marked not with a name, but with what might be described as memories of the event.

This serves two purposes.  Firstly, one of the markers may well mark the grave of Charlotte Noon - we will never know. Or perhaps, those unmarked graves, marked in this way may contain the remains of people who knew Charlotte Noon. With an event such as a murder, within such a small community, the reverberations would be felt for many years to come - those who did not know her personally and were laid to rest in the cemetery, may well have known about her or had memories of the event.

Secondly, the fragments of this story reflect the fragmentary nature of memory and of the past itself. The story as a whole - just like the past - will only come together through the actions of visitors walking between the markers and within their imaginations as they piece it back together. 

Furthermore, as they walk, visitors will get to know the full extent of the cemetery; through walking between the markers,  between what might be the graves of long forgotten people, they might be said to be re-establishing links between them; links that existed 150 years ago when those whose forgotten graves are marked also walked this place and its surroundings.

Finally, on leaving the cemetery, visitors will walk the very streets Charlotte herself would have walked. A leaflet provided will give details of the personages named in the newspapers, and will provide visitors with information which will allow them to visit ordinary, unpreposesssing parts of the city relevant to the tale.

In walking around the cemetery, as the work requires the visitor to do, one is made aware of the present - the trees, the birds singing, the wind in the leaves and so on. One can hear the sounds of everyday life. One can see the everyday as it happens.

The work is a memorial - one which reminds the visitor that what it commemorates happened when the past was in fact the present, when birds were singing and the wind blew through the trees. It was Henri Bergson who said that through the perceiving and moving body, past and present interpenetrate each other, and in many respects this is something which I hope will be experienced by the visitor as they walk around the cemetery.