Spring Spotlight - Sculpture in the Garden of Death by Dr Roger Bowdler

Spring Spotlight Lecture. Sculpture in the Garden of Death: Tendencies in cemetery memorials 1840-1940 by Dr Roger Bowdler FSA

Sculpture in the Garden of Death: Tendencies in cemetery memorials 1840-1940 by Dr Roger Bowdler FSA

This talk emerges from the newly published book, co-written with Brent Elliott, The British Cemetery 1700 - 2020: Architecture, Landscape, Sculpture (Historic England/Liverpool University Press). Little attention has been paid to the sculpture present in cemeteries and there are fine things to be seen. Outdoor conditions determined the choice of material and made bronze a preferred option, particularly in the age of the New Sculpture. Some sculpted monuments were bespoke: other marble memorials s were mass-produced and imported in considerable numbers from Italy. The talk will also look at works in less common material including concrete and granite.

Roger Bowdler studied History of Art at Cambridge and completed his PhD there in 1991, on death-related 17th century church monuments. He joined English Heritage in 1989 as a historian in the London Region and rose to become Director of Listing in 2011 and a member of the Historic England executive team on its creation in 2015. Since 2019, he has worked as a partner at Montagu Evans, planning consultants, advising on heritage issues. A Commissioner of the Royal Hospital, he sits on the London Diocescan Advisory Committee (DAC) and is a trustee of the War Memorials Trust. He has written extensively on funerary art, and his short books War Memorials and Churchyards were published in 2019. Roger is a PSSA Trustee and a member of the PSSA's Specialist Advisory Board.

Image: Sir George Frampton RA, detail from Monument to Captain James McLaren (d. 1910), Dean Cemetery, Edinburgh (photo: Roger Bowdler).