'Local Monument' - Looking down a garden towards a tall conifer tree

Date:
1 May 2020
Location:
Clubmill Terrace, Chesterfield, Derbyshire
Reference:
HEC01/036/02/06/02
Type:
Photograph (Digital)
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Description

The Picturing Lockdown Collection was created during April and May 2020, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. During seven days the public were asked to submit photographs that they felt best represented their experiences of lockdown in England, and from these submissions one hundred representing all the different geographic regions were chosen to be archived with Historic England. Alongside these images, ten artists were commissioned to produce their own images over the course of five days, representing their lockdown experience. These were supplemented with images by Historic England’s own photographers. Together, the Picturing Lockdown collection forms a permanent visual record of this unusual time in history.

This photograph, taken at 16.11 on 1st May 2020, is the second of five images depicting the lockdown as experienced by the artist Bella Milroy, and represents the East Midlands region. The artist has written the following text to explain how this image documents their experience of lockdown: "This great big coniferous skyscraper is a monument that towers over our little terrace, and has done for the last however many years. Our little row of terraces, a millipede of redbrick and semi-rendered two-up-and-two-downs, crept up this high hill on the edge of the Peak District after a local cooperative formed in the Napoleonic Wars in response to flour rationing. The co-op came together and built a mill, taking full advantage of the high winds that hit hillside. The mill no longer stands, and this small, unadopted road now forms just one part of a warren of terraces that run round an abandoned reservoir in the middle of this suburban estate. Needless to say, we are extremely lucky in this community in that we are overlooked by an abundance of trees. This conifer in particular sits in view of my sofa; it watches me sitting eating dinner with Jono, crumpled in a dressing gown with Doris, or just daydreaming on an afternoon. We spend time together, this thing and I, just as I do within this house and in this tired body, amongst the ghosts that once occupied the walls of it. The world is a new planet now and yet here is this same view that stood an age ago when the same sad souls looked out and worried and cried, and were happy and hugged and missed lovers and giggled and made plans and ate lunch; looking out onto these monuments, these great witnesses of the earth that gaze back at us without glaring. Waving to all those memories of lives lived in this moment, in this place, all the years before me. I couldn’t ask for a better neighbour."

Content

This is part of the Volume: HEC01/036/02/06 Picturing Lockdown Collection: Artists' Submissions - Bella Milroy; within the Sub Series: HEC01/036/02 Picturing Lockdown Collection - Artists' Submissions; within the Series: HEC01/036 Picturing Lockdown Collection; within the Collection: HEC01 Historic England

Rights

© Bella Milroy

People & Organisations

Photographer: Milroy, Bella

Keywords

Health And Welfare