3 minute read
The national covid memorial wall
Julie Dunk visits the moving national memorial on London's South Bank.
On a recent visit to London, I took the opportunity to visit the National Covid Memorial Wall on the South Bank, opposite the Houses of Parliament. I had seen press articles about the wall, so knew of its existence. But nothing had quite prepared me for the sheer scale of the memorial, nor the heart-rending stories it tells.
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As you approach the wall, you are aware of a sea of red and pink. As you get closer, that sea resolves into individual hearts of various sizes and hues. Each heart represents a person who has died with Covid-19 on their death certificate; each heart represents a wave of grief.
The memorial stretches for over a third of a mile, and is right outside St Thomas’ Hospital. There are over 180,000 hearts, representing the estimated number of people who have died of Covid during the pandemic. Each heart is hand painted, and is therefore unique, just like the people the hearts represent.
The memorial wall was started in March 2021 by the campaign group Covid-19 Bereaved Families, assisted by fellow campaign group Led by Donkeys. The Covid-19 Bereaved Families group was founded by Matt Fowler and Jo Goodman, who both lost their fathers to Covid during the pandemic. They became concerned that the deaths of people due to Covid were just becoming statistics, reported blankly without any acknowledgment of the humanity behind the figures. Jo Goodman stated in a Guardian interview ‘they say grief is love with nowhere to go – the wall is where it goes’.
Despite the threat of arrest for criminal damage, and a potential £10k fine, volunteers from the campaign groups started to draw the hearts on the wall on 29th March 2021.
Within a few hours, over 1000 hearts had appeared, and within 10 days there were more than 150,000, reflecting the number of deaths from Covid at that time.
Initially it was envisaged that the memorial wall would be a temporary memorial, and that the area would be cleaned after a period of time. However, campaigners are arguing that the wall should remain as a permanent memorial. A team of volunteers regularly touch up the hearts and messages to ensure they remain legible. Despite the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, promising a ‘fitting and permanent’ memorial to those who died from Covid-19, there are as yet no firm plans for this. The Government has declined to grant the wall a permanent status, and it may have to be removed in time.
On the first anniversary of the commencement of the wall, a petition with over 106,000 signatures was presented to 10 Downing Street, calling for the memorial wall to be made permanent. It is understood that the Government will be setting up a commission to look at creating a permanent memorial, so all is not yet lost for the wall. With the strength of public feeling on their side, the campaigners may get the result they are hoping for.
As well as the dedications within the hearts on the wall, there is a website where families can record their losses and leave a photo and a tribute: https://nationalcovidmemorialwall.dedicationpage.org. Reading the dedications on both the wall and the website is incredibly moving, and leaves you in no doubt that the scale of the loss to Covid is huge, and has had a massive impact on so many families. The people commemorated here are definitely more than statistics.
The National Covid Memorial Wall may not be fine art, and may not be to everyone’s taste. It does, however, capture the tragedy of the pandemic in human terms, and allows for real expressions of grief from those who suffered a loss, and for everyone who was in any way affected by the pandemic. I had my reservations about whether the wall was a suitable national memorial until I visited it; seeing it in person has convinced me that is it the perfect expression of love with nowhere to go.
