STEPHEN EMMS

While it's easy to walk straight past, look closely at a memorial bench and you can glimpse a human life. Take the one on Blackford Hill, Edinburgh, that remembers Olive Smith MBE, who died trying to rescue a drowning labrador; or another, in Arbroath, that commemorates Czech fruit-picker Marek Smrs, found dead in the street last year. They led very different lives, but they are united by the choice of memorial - one that deftly illustrates how we grieve, both privately and publicly.

In these secular times, the cult of the memorial bench is at its zenith. It could be said that, like the laying of flowers or the more controversial mountain memorial, the bench is another example of the popularity of public statements of private grief; the legacy of Princess Diana's death. But benches are different: purposeful; unfaddy. The combination of carefully worded inscription and sheer utility creates a quiet poetry, the opposite of today's throwaway culture.

City park benches provide a moment's reflection amid more demanding pleasures, while isolated benches, carved to blend in with their environment, provide both a literal and metaphorical platform for us to consider our own mortality. "It has to be said that the Scots have a natural reticence, which means the dedications are often quite prosaic - or more so than the flowery ones in England, anyway," says Val Fiddes, whose great-aunt and uncle are commemorated by a pair of benches in Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh.

So can anyone get a bench? It depends where you are. In parks in Glasgow a bench starts at £564, while in Edinburgh they are at a premium: desirable Princes Street Gardens is "full", and anywhere else will set you back £850 for metal and £1100 for wood. In Arnprior, near Stirling, at Steven Burgess's furniture shop, a solid teak one can be had for as little as £450 - but this won't secure you a place in an all-important public space. "Most of the time we install them at nursing homes, golf clubs or bowling clubs," says Burgess.

And when did the custom start? It's a question that seems to stump Historic Scotland. "We don't keep track of them," says an official. "Unless it's a listed bench, we can't help." Nor do the local authorities in Edinburgh, Glasgow or Inverness hold information about memorial benches in, for example, Princes Street Gardens or the Botanic Gardens, or by the River Ness.

Looking over the Border, I discover that the oldest such memorial on Hampstead Heath in London (where there are 475 benches), now archived, dates back to 1944. According to English Heritage's Jenifer White, there are benches in existence in Patterdale in the Lake District that celebrate Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee in 1897, and, on the Isle Of Wight, one dating as far back as 1881. "This shows that the idea in itself was at least current then," says White, "and post-First World War cemetery aesthetics, as well as the development of remembrance gardens, must have stimulated ideas for other forms of memorialisation."

My father, the historian Richard Emms, believes they could even date back as far as the Great Exhibition of 1851 - or at least the open-air movement, led by the National Trust in the late nineteenth century, which saved open spaces for the public. "The outdoor memorial as a secular retreat from churches may have been adopted by the free thinkers of the day such as Darwin and Huxley - and, later, George Bernard Shaw," he believes.

Whatever their origin, memorial benches, with their juxtaposition of functionality and poetry, their celebration of meaning and transience, are snapshots of human life. Here are the stories behind two of them.

Hannah McElligott, Carrbridge, near Aviemore The engraving says: "In memory of Hannah's love of the mountain. May her spirit ride free. HRH McElligott 1984-2005"

"She loved working with kids on the mountains," says Carrbridge-based musician Gilly McElligott, 58, of his daughter, who tragically took her own life. Hannah, who was 21, had just completed a foundation year in art at Central St Martins in London, but was also one of Britain's youngest qualified skiing instructors. "After it happened," says her mother Bobbie, "the British Association of Snowsport Instructors approached us about a memorial bench. They liaised with the Cairngorm Mountain Trust and even funded the bench."

The bench, which is 550 metres above sea level, was put up in May this year, just over 12 months after Hannah died. "It blends in with the landscape and has an almost mystical feel," says Bobbie, 62. "The first time we came, there were 12 of us. We had strawberries and champagne."

"She would have loved the fact that we were opening Bolly for her," laughs Gilly.

On the day of her death, Hannah was due to play the whistle on-stage with Gilly at the local pub. "The last time I saw her alive, she blew me a kiss," he says. "I still wish I'd made her play with me that day."

Hannah had also arranged to pick her mother up in the car from work at 5.30pm. "She didn't arrive, so my daughter-in-law gave me a lift home, and that's when I found her," Bobbie says quietly. "I'm glad it was me, though. I was in shock but I wasn't panicking. I was calm as you like. It was really strange; part of you doesn't believe it's happening."

"It's what she could have done; what she could have been. That's what cracks me up," says Bobbie. "It's the little triggers that do it, like when the information arrived through the post on her course that was meant to start in September. But I know, when I get upset, that it doesn't last for ever."

"We don't wallow," says her brother Jonny, 21. "Even now, when you go in the house, it's like you're getting a hug from Hannah."

"She was a wonderful girl,"

says Gilly. "When I go, I want my ashes to be scattered from her bench."

Malcolm Lawson and Jessie Lawson, Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh The two plaques are in memory of Malcolm Lawson and of Jessie Lawson, each from their son and daughter.

"I met her just the once," says Val Fiddes, 61, of her great-aunt Jessie Lawson. "I was four years old, and my mother drove me to Prestwick Airport to meet this old lady with white hair and just the slightest hint of an American accent."

Aunt Jessie was carrying a little box, which she promptly handed to Val's mother. "Don't drop it,' she said casually. That's Uncle Malcolm's ashes.' Even after all this time, I remember my mother looking horrified."

Malcolm and Jessie met in Edinburgh at the turn of the twentieth century. A tradesman from Mull, born in the 1880s, he had arrived in the city to find work. "Sadly, none of our family knows how they met," says Val, "but, after they married, they didn't stay in Edinburgh too long, emigrating to America in the early 1900s." It was after Malcolm died in 1949 that Aunt Jessie had flown over from their home in Detroit to scatter his ashes in Mull. "He grew up by the sea, and I suppose it was the natural thing to do."

The benches themselves date back to the 1960s, when the Lawsons' children decided to create permanent memorials to their parents. "Although they were based in the States," says Val, "they used to visit Scotland regularly." And how often does she visit the benches? "There's a car park nearby and so I often walk through the gardens to get to Princes Street," says Val. "Sometimes I stop and sit on one of the benches.

"It makes me think about my family in general, I suppose, rather than their lives. Sometimes I think about my daughter, who, at about the same ages as Malcolm and Jessie, emigrated too, and now lives in Sydney." For more bench stories, or if you have a story about a memorial bench, please visit www.benchpoetry.blogspot.com or email stephenemms@hotmail.co.uk