AFIVE square metre stone map featuring Warwickshire and Herefordshire and the London boroughs, and carved in Caithness, went on show in London's Grosvenor Square yesterday, near the US embassy.
But it is just a small part of a map of Britain which will soon cross the Atlantic to appear in the [pounds]2.5m British Memorial Garden in New York, commemorating the 67 British victims who died in the World Trade Centre on 9/11.
Anish Kapoor, the British artist, won the competition to create a sculpture that will anchor the park, while artist Simon Verity's role is to prepare a stone pathway of grey Caithness f lagstone punctuated by lighter Moray sandstone.
The stones have been cut into curved ribbons by high powered water jets at the Norfrost refigerator factory in Castletown. The sandstone was then cut to fit between the f lagstone ribbons and individually engraved with the name of a county in the British Isles. Two hundred and forty stones will be used to cover 95 counties.
When they reach New York, the stones are to be laid to represent the UK coastline, leaving a landscaped map of Britain in the park.
British dependent territories such as the Virgin and South Sandwich Islands have been engraved onto smaller stones cut as commas, while the shields of the 42 British societies in New York, such as the Daughters of the Empire and the St George's Society, will adorn iron bollards at the end of the garden.
Camilla Hellman, president of the British Memorial Garden, said: "The garden already means a huge amount to Americans because they are so grateful to Britain for everything that we do. It will symbolise and celebrate the relationship between the two countries. It's all about ref lecting, remembering and rebuilding."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article