Silence
Carved in Stone – St Swithin's Garden, Free School Lane &
Saltergate
Find
this open space of shifting green and stone - trees, grass, walls and
paths enclosed by buildings and roadway on three sides. The whole
site is somehow a blank soundscape, it doesn't hold the space -
busy-ness and noise strays through.
The
focus here is to the ground, to the low walls and paths that cross
the site. The silence is found in fragmented words - exquisitely
hand-carved words, names and dates, silenced when the tombstones were
re-purposed as pathways. As we walk we silence them further, eroding
them with each rough footstep.
How
does this place speak through you? What would it be like to hear
these fragmented carved words whispered aloud? Reading was not always
done in silence – until the twelfth century it was usual to read
aloud, even when alone. Now we read by listening inside ourselves to
silent word echoes. There's silence too in the fossilised stories
within the stones themselves
There's
reverberation of something else here too – this was the site of the
central cattle market and known as Sheep Square. There was also wool
trading, the thread market, and maltmarket nearby. Bordering the
park, on either side of the vestry building doorway (now a cafe) are
small stone heads of two jaunty men – can we hear them joining in
the gossip at a lively market day auction?