'Khakitects: Experience, Memory and Design in the War Cemeteries o

[Hedley Malloch]

This was the title of a talk given last week at the IFF Museum in Ypres, as part of a programme of eight organised by IFF and the University of Kent, Canterbury.

The speaker was Tim Fox-Godden from the University of Kent and he spoke about the work of the 'junior' architects of the IWGC; that is, not the big three (Lutyens, Baker and Bloomfield), but the 'B' list Cowlinshaws and especially Van Berg. It was full of interest. Things I did not know:

1. A requirement of recruitment was that juniors had to have served in Army during the War. They were therefore familiar with battlefields and trench warfare. Because of the job and their training they were drawn disproportionately from the London Regiment (Artists' Rifles); the Royal Engineers and the Service Corps.

2. They were all organised under the same roof in St. Omer. They swopped projects and the big three often delegated some of their bigger jobs to them, and signed them off when they were done. This means that the juniors did not always receive the credit they deserved.

3. Because of the flexibility they had in organising their work, many of them took on the design of cemeteries in those parts of the battlefields in which they had fought. They knew many of the men who were to be buried in their cemeteries. Indeed Van Berg designed the cemetery in which his brother is buried.

The latter probably helps explain one feature of CWGC cemeteries often remarked on, and believed to be missing in the military cemeteries of the other nations - intimacy.

This promises to be a good series, and well worth attending if you find yourself in Canterbury or Ypres.

See for further details:

http://www.gatewaysfww.org.uk/news/seminar-series-2015-16

[AOK4]

I would have wanted to go there, but with an announced train strike, I didn't want to take the risk not being able to return home after the talk...

Your remark about the cemeteries of other nations is more due to the fact that the other nations concentrated their cemeteries (or in the case of the Germans: other nations concentrated their graves (France) or they were more or less forced to concentrate them (Belgium)). The British were the only ones that kept almost all of their cemeteries.

Jan

[Fattyowls]

Hedley

Thanks for the precis of the Tim Fox-Godden talk; that's really interesting. Do you know if Tim is going into print about it? It looks like a great series of talks and makes me wish I was closer.

Pete.

[Hedley Malloch]

Hello Peter,

He does not appear to have published anything. His CV is on Academia.uk and it contains a link to his paper - which he has not uploaded. This is at http://www.academia.edu/15319468/Khakitects_Experience_Memory_and_Design_in_the_War_Cemeteries_of_the_old_Western_Front

You could always email and ask him for a copy.

He did say he was doing a Ph.D and in that case he will be a busy boy. Very busy. Very, very busy.

[Fattyowls]

Hedley, I might just do that; it's a crazy plan but it just might work. I've read Stamp and Empires of the Dead but this is a new area which I'm really fascinated by.

Pete.

[Michelle Young]

Tim is an occasional visitor to the GWF, he also has a blog which doesn't appear to have been updated for some time, but he is a busy man

http://geometryofsleep.blogspot.co.uk

Michelle

[John(txic)]

I have subscribed to this fascinating Blog (in the hope another Post will be made - fingers crossed!) Thanks for the pointer, Michelle.

[Hedley Malloch]

I find that architects write about war memorials and cemeteries in a much more critically informed way than we do, but that's hardly surprising. For us - including me - the adjectives rarely stray from a very narrow and well-beaten path of 'peaceful', 'beautiful', 'well-kept' and 'tranquil'. But a professional architect can dissect them and lay their qualities bare.

In his book on Lutyens and the Thiepval Memorial, Gavin Stamp, Professor of Architecture at Glasgow University articulates and makes explicit just what makes it such a wonderful memorial. He wrote a good, critical piece on the Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park - he did not join in the general clamour of uncritical adulation.

What makes the CWGC's work so good is not a lack of concentration cemeteries - it has those in abundance. It is that the IWGC constructions have been accurately described as the last major civil engineering project for which the British government hired the best technical, artistic and administrative brains and gave them a decent budget with which to work. It's nothing more complicated than that.

One can see the difference if one looks at the construction and design of Pheasant Wood, the most modern CWGC cemetery, which gives the impression that it has been built to a very tight budget.

[Fattyowls]

Tim is an occasional visitor to the GWF, he also has a blog which doesn't appear to have been updated for some time, but he is a busy man

http://geometryofsleep.blogspot.co.uk

Michelle

Thanks Michelle, I'll work my way though that. I've been reading about the battlefield clearances recently and this is a very interesting post script.

Pete.

[Guest]

There's also this Illustrating the Great War

Mike