Omagh memorial design in top five shortlist
A group of West Norfolk artists and landscape architects have been shortlisted in an international competition to create an Omagh bomb memorial.
The partnership is just one of five in the running to create the memorial to the victims of the Omagh atrocity in Northern Ireland, when 31 people were killed by a bomb planted by the Real IRA on August 15, 1998.
The chosen memorial will be unveiled in time for the tenth anniversary of the bombing next year.
Sculptors Charlotte Howarth and Louise Tiplady, of Making Marks Ltd in West Acre, have collaborated with landscape architects Eoghan Shiels, Stephen Flynn and Kate Collins, from Shiels Flynn in Docking, on their design.
"We hope to hear if we have won this month," said Miss Howarth. "But we are just thrilled to have reached the shortlist of such a high-profile international competition."
Their design is in two parts with a memorial in the High Street on the site of the explosion and a garden memorial about 200 metres away.
The garden design features a central font representing a centre of healing and a series of 50 shattered stones, all aligned to the font.
Miss Howarth said carved into some of the stones will be a selection of texts and images from newspaper reports, photographs, the many thousands of condolence letters and poems in an Omagh archive.
The idea of the stones was inspired by the many ancient stone circles still standing at sites across the Irish landscape, she added.
The garden is designed so that people can cross a bridge over water to reach the font, which would be carved with ripples to enable the visually-impaired to touch it and understand what they may not be able to see. Thirty-one trees will also be planted around the shattered stones to represent the number of people who died.
Miss Tiplady said the wording on the bomb site memorial is still to be decided, but it will have a marker stone pointing to two more marker stones at the two entrances to the garden.
"One of those stones is likely to have the names of all those who died carved onto it," she said.
Making Marks and Shiels Flynn previously collaborated around five years ago for the restoration and regeneration of Downham's town square.
"The Omagh Memorial seemed an ideal project for our combined talents," said Miss Howarth.
The partnership submitted its outline proposals early in the summer, and went to Ireland for an interview before being shortlisted.
All five proposals have been on display in Omagh, including a scale model of the font built by Miss Howarth, to give local people an opportunity to comment on the designs before a final one is picked next month.
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for King's Lynn
Sunday 27 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 10 C to 25 C
Wind Speed: 16 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 10 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: North
