When the last surviving Dambuster, 98 year old George ‘Johnny’ Johnson, turned over a spadeful of earth at last year’s ground breaking ceremony at Norton Disney in Lincolnshire, he inaugurated the long-awaited construction of a major landmark sculpture of a Lancaster bomber. ‘Johnny’ Johnson, who among other honours and awards has an MBE for services to Second World War remembrance and the community, including his outstanding work on mental health rehabilitation, imprinted a little of himself in that Lincolnshire landscape’s layers of memory. He was a link between past and present, and linked the landmark to the future perceptions and narratives of the Lancaster aircrews.
Johnny Johnson at the ground breaking ceremony, May 2018 (Photo: BBC)
As the project nears completion in the Summer of 2020, it is already under threat. A new planning application has been submitted (yes, another one) for the development of a huge animal rendering plant on a green field site in the immediate vicinity of the memorial. The plant, which will be just 100 metres away, will inflict itself and its noise, light pollution, traffic, emissions, and visual bulk and height on to a fragile and beautiful ecosystem, a multi-period significant archaeological environment, and of course the skyline - and it will dwarf the Lancaster sculpture. In contrast, no lighting, power or other services will be installed at the landmark site.
To appreciate fully the impact of the proposed plant, it’s necessary to understand the nature of the Lancaster plane sculpture, the meanings attached to it, and the rationale behind its siting. The Registered Charity behind this landmark installation, the Bomber County Gateway Trust, decided early on to design a full-sized representation of an Avro Lancaster Mk1 Bomber, to be constructed from a steel frame, mounted on a slim steel support structure to give the impression that it is in flight on the horizon heading ‘home’ to RAF Swinderby just 3 km away. It will be visible from fields and the main road to tens of thousands of people daily in a similar way to the iconic Angel of the North.
Design drawing of ‘On Freedom’s Wings (Image: Bomber County Gateway Trust)
The Trust notes that, ‘The site is particularly fitting, not only because of its perfect vantage point, but also because a number of aircraft, including Lancasters crashed nearby during the Second World War’. Furthermore, in terms of respect for the environment, the Trust has done its homework. ‘The delicate eco-system which exists in the vicinity of the site and around Hill Holt Wood, goes hand-in-hand with a particularly dark environment at night, which will be preserved’, it says.
Local supporters and the Trust are acutely aware of the full environmental context of the installation, from woodland trees to bats, from prehistoric and Roman archaeology (including burials) to military history. The Trust has carefully and conscientiously conducted researches, consulted local people and groups, followed all planning guidance and regulations, and publicised its plans and progress openly, online. In contrast, it is claimed in objections published online by Lincolnshire County Council, that the rendering plant developer and its paid contractors still appear to be woefully under-informed about the evidence held on the Historic Environment Records (HERs) for Lincs and Notts and in other archaeological databases, and shockingly unconcerned about the full impact that the proposed development will have on the ecosystem, the landscape and the Lancaster landmark.
The landmark will be a focal point, and a talking point too. It has made me think about and re-read reams of material about the history of the RAF. Bomber Command of course is not without its controversies and fierce critics, but in a liberal democracy we talk about these things freely, not least so we can properly frame discussions about the brutal realities of armed conflict and the politicisation of sentimentality. George ‘Johnny’ Johnson knows about the aftermath, and the importance of funding mental health programmes.
Model in situ (Image: Bomber County Gateway Trust)
The Lancaster installation is a Landmark, first and foremost, at the entry point to ‘Bomber County’, at the Lincolnshire / Nottinghamshire border. It will symbolise different things to different viewers - including death, loss, remembrance, sacrifice, homecomings, and atonement - and it has already initiated a new cycle of memories being etched onto the landscape. Objects, landscapes and remembrance are loaded with meanings - and they are complicated. As Rosa Vilbr wrote about the Bomber Command Memorial in London’s Green Park, in her thought-proving article for Open Democracy, ‘ … the meanings of memorial sites do not remain static over time but change as a result of interaction with their visitors. Since it has opened the memorial has been altered by the flowers and messages left at the site by veterans and their descendants.’
We are not shaped by monuments - we re-shape and change them through time. The Lancaster landmark being constructed at the edge of Lincolnshire similarly is likely to become a place of contemplative pilgrimage, and to undergo the transformative effects of visitors leaving artefacts as tributes as well as messages about individuals which other visitors can examine and absorb. I’ve written elsewhere recently about how powerful an experience this can be, based on my walk through the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery in East Jerusalem, reading the headstones and the messages from parents about their dead sons. This drive to transmit knowledge and share feelings down through the generations, pulsing and changing like a river, is as old as humanity. It’s part of us. We feel emotion.
Why, in Lincolnshire, would we even contemplate allowing a hideous mega-structure like an animal rendering plant to overshadow what will be an outstanding skyline landmark that will be regarded by many as both monumental sculpture and memorial? And equally, why would we allow such a huge industrial development to despoil a fragile habitat and a precious archaeological landscape?
I’ll write more about the archaeology in a future blog piece. I’ll sign this one off with a final thought. If we stop remembering, if we allow even our most recent monumental tributes to be immediately denigrated and desecrated, it’s not just the monuments in their landscapes that become subverted - so does our future capacity to will ourselves to pull back from the brink. We need to expand our memories, not squash them into submission. We need a capacity to be able to say and to believe, ‘Never Forget. Never again’.
Image: Bomber County Gateway Trust
To Object to this Planning Application (PL/0036/18)
Click here to open the link to this application on Lincolnshire County Council’s planning portal. Then click on the ‘comment application button’. You can also see all the other objections that have been lodged so far.
You can email the planning officer directly Natalie.Dear@lincolnshire.gov.uk; or write directly to Lincolnshire County Council Planning Department, Lancaster House, 36 Orchard Street, Lincoln LN1 1XX. Please mark the emails or letters ‘For the attention of Ms. N. Dear’ and cite reference PL/0036/18.
The 'official' closing date for objections is 6th December 2019 - although this in itself has been objected to, on the grounds that it is an unfairly tight turn-around time for objectors. Early indications are that 'late' objections are likely to be considered up to 31st January; although the planning officers hope to get the agenda and papers out by mid-January for the planning meeting on 4th Feb 2020.
To Donate to the Bomber County Gateway Trust
The charity is still fundraising and needs a little more help to complete the landmark sculpture in 2020. Click here to see its fundraising page.
(Image: Bomber County Gateway Trust)
Acknowledgments and Thanks
The Bomber County Gateway Trust website http://www.bombergatewaytrust.co.uk/
Lincolnshire County Council planning register, entry for PL/0036/18 http://lincolnshire.planning-register.co.uk/Search/Results
The Norton Disney History and Archaeology Group (Twitter @ndhags)
BBC article 15 May 2018 ‘Dambuster George 'Johnny' Johnson at ceremony for RAF sculpture’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-44132254
Richard Parker 1st Jan 2019 Norton Disney Roman Villa blog article https://nortondisneyromanvilla.wordpress.com/2019/01/01/2018-was-an-important-and-good-year-for-norton-disneys-archaeology/
Rosa Vilbr article https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/shine-a-light/remembering-what-exactly-reflections-on-britain-s-bomber-command-memorial/
My article on the Commonwealth War Grave Commission Cemetery in East Jersusalem https://eleanorscottarchaeology.com/els-archaeology-blog/2019/11/11/our-boy-an-individual-act-of-remembrance-in-a-landscape-of-the-fallen-east-jerusalem