Memorial benches

I agree with sodapop and lots of you. At Southwold, they have little plaques all along the pier, on the wooden rails. I like reading them. It's discreet and doesn't spoil the look of the place. Likewise benches among sea front.
The local council should impose limits where appropriate, as I can see they are spoiling some wide open beautiful unspoilt spaces.

What is wrong with remembering someone who loved a place, may have walked there or enjoyed the view, by placing a seat for others to do likewise?
Are we (or some people, present company excepted) getting squeamish about reminders of the dead or even about death?
A well placed bench on the seafront or facing a lovely view benefits all who care to enjoy it. And can provide an opportunity for quiet reflection or companionable silence too.
A plaque or carving also commemorates the person, but nobody in their right minds could claim sitting rights!
I also think flowers are OTT but daffodils or crocuses or snowdrops planted in the grass around can be a lovely touch.
Oh the intolerance of some people

My favourite ever bench plaque simply read:

“For Bob, who hated this view.”

Terrible isn’t it? I remember climbing up Snowdon and there was a bench every few yards, and the same up Ben Nevis and Scafell Pike

Some of us might welcome a wee sit down if not every few yards but certainly after a steep bit! .

I have no problem with these benches (especially now I am getting older!). I do agree that there should be a limit on how many there are, too many bunched together would not enhance an area.

I hope you never have to grieve - I find it more than a little sad when folk just criticize - if you don't like benches, roadside tributes or anything else just be kind and let others grieve in their own way (after all - you don't have to use the benches or visit them if you don't want to) - and if you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all

I like benches and like to wonder about the person it's dedicated to. But bunches of very soon dead flowers at a roadside are absolutely awful. My family have also been told of my feelings on this.

We have some small pillars at a spot, on Spice Island, where loads of people would like to put a bench but there is no room. On the pillars are loads of the little plaques but then just one bench at the most suitable spot, I think this us the perfect solution, unobtrusive littlebpiller which you can go and read if you wish, well placed bench for visitors to sit on and no excess stuff anywhere. I think the council charge a few pounds for the chap to properly attach the plaque but not excessive I am sure.

I love benches as they are so helpful for rest stops. Memorial plaques are usually small and I'm grateful that someone paid for a place to sit. Sometimes we need to "stop and stare" and benches help me to do this.

It seems that a lot of people are missing the point here. I dont think the OP is against benches per se just the number of them. After all a beauty spot will not remain a beauty spot if it is covered in benches. I too think they are a lovely tribute when in the right spot but what was originally a lovely view for the person remembered would not be so if blocked by a solid barrier of benches.

Just found this. www.memorialsinportsmouth.co.uk/memorials.htm I think Portsmouth has so many monuments and memorials that a few more simply cannot hurt

Other people's sentimental ramblings really are becoming intrusive.........yes, a bench is useful to the living but when they say 'George's favourite view' really??? How many views did George have in his repetoire, had he seen the Pyramids or the Taj Mahal? What kind of view expert was old George?

The benches themselves are cluttering up places that ought to be just beautiful, with the occasional resting spot, now there are George's perching all over the place, just hanging about waiting to provide yet another bench.

Time for a declutter.

Shrines at the site of accidents with tea lights and flowers from the garage marking the spot, it is as if people cannot manage their own grief without inflicting an eye sore on everybody else.

Don't get me started on Hospices and their money grabbing schemes, buying a tin leaf for a tree in the foyer with your loves ones name on............coughing up 15 quid for a metal monstrocity doesn't make your loved one any more beloved.

It is all fast becoming a fashion that we well could well do without. When HRH Diana dies the flood gates opened for these mawkish displays, I find them ghastly.

There is a place in the heart for the ones we love.

I agree that too many memorial benches can seem intrusive in some sites. It is also very sad when the benches are allowed to deteriorate to a state where they should really be scrapped. It must be difficult for organisations to stop accepting such gifts but there has to be a cut off point somewhere.

I also hate to see the sad bunches of dead flowers left for a roadside memorial.

I dont mind benches, but like Nonnie I hate the roadside memorials with piles of dead flowers still in their wrappers which seem to have become so fashionable after Diana.

I can see that in some places there may be too many, but having a 'horror' of them does seem a bit OTT! A dislike of them, perhaps...

I can't say I've ever seen too many - more often not enough. However one of our favourite walks - one we also do with guests - takes us across Richmond Park to a beautiful view of the Thames and the water meadows - painted by Turner -where there's a long promenade lined with lots of benches with memorial plaques.

Given that there's a very nice pub - The Roebuck - just across the road, on any nice afternoon or evening there are lots of people enjoying a drink with the lovely view. And so far Mr W and I/guests have never been short of a place to sit.
For which I can only be grateful to the relatives who provided the benches.

Oh dear...

There must be other options. When theatres are fund raising to buy new seats it is often possible to 'buy' a seat and have a little brass plate with your name on. Perhaps they could do a similar thing when a person who loved going to the theatre dies and their relatives want to leave something to remember them by. Think I might suggest this to my local theatre.

I am would prefer to see the money it must cost in providing these wooden seats go to providing a cure for the various illness's that cause so much suffering. Living in the southwest I am fortunate to have coastal walks within reach and have observed many of these seats and can assure you it is not always to admire the views but young holidaymakers eating their takeaways or sandwiches ice creams and horror of horrors even one young mother changing her child's nappy on one of them.
Surely we can remember our loved and departed in more ways than this.

I'm more than happy for my mums bench to be used by a family having a day out.
Sandwiches, bums, whatever.
Its a bench, not a shrine.

I wish to add that at least they have a good purpose whereas grave stones whilst meaning a great deal to the relatives and friends of someone serve no other purpose and cost a great deal more than a handy bench. Of course the number of them does get a bitdaft but then that is the council policy that should be questioned....sharing a bench rarely happens so yet another one is bunged out there ...Scarborough in particular DOES have rather a lot. I would hate to think my Dads bench at Pollock Park Glasgow had been scrapped because of space. If more places such as the Kings Theatre Edinburgh do, let people sponsor a brick or a seat or a space of unused wall think of the money saved in maintaining all these. I quite fancy a small brass plate in the lavatory at Kings Cross.... @at least it would be occasionally noticed like benches that ARE gratefully sat on by those of us who like to think somebody's loved one also enjoyed the view. Getting the councils to position them sensibly and relatives to make alternative suggestions would be an idea. Jo x

I'm with Witzend. I've never seen "too many benches"!! Many a time I've been somewhere and have wished there was a bench there.

I'm happy to see the benches and the plaques are interesting, however I do object to the bunches of dead flowers in a vase with mucky water roughly fastened to the bench, sometimes on the seat. Looks scruffy and puts me off actually sitting down.

Radicalnan.
No doubt, and not to every ones' taste, but I had to at your comments.

I think yet again, there is a reaction developing to a wider argument which was not necessarily part of the original point.
This was supposed to be about benches (but how can anybody have a “horror” of them or “freak out”? OP from what I have read before now strikes me as way too intelligent and sensible to react so histrionically)
As for plaques, there is no obligation to read them. That is surely a matter of choice?
So, endow a table or a theatre seat, or a scholarship if funds permit, plant a tree, in fact do what you want to remember a loved one.
Plastic “tributes” are tacky IMO as is the practice of leaving flowers wrapped in cellophane but that is MO isn’t it?
I am just off to Paws grave with fresh flowers which I am tying up with raffia to keep everything natural. There is a bench at the West end of the village church quite close to his grave so I may have a little sit there and have a quiet moment , looking out over the fields and the village.
In years to come there may be a plaque saying “She loved this view” Who knows?

It is true, as Monica says though, that the headland above the town of Whitby has a massive amount.I wonder if they have a band that plays there, so the seating is for that?