A memorial landscape commemorating President John F Kennedy (1917-1963) created for the British government and Kennedy Memorial Trust in 1964-1965 by Geoffrey Jellicoe. The landscape, set on a hill to the west of the Runnymede water meadows, is of three parts: a woodland area with a path with 50 steps leading up the hill to the memorial, the memorial itself set in a glade, and a sitting area set in meadowland, with long views across the River Thames.
LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM AND SETTING
Runnymede is a series of water meadows on the south-west side of the River Thames between Windsor and Egham. The water meadow below the Kennedy Memorial is properly known as the Long Mede. They are traditionally associated with the signing of the Magna Carta, along with Magna Carta Island in the river. Lady Fairhaven and her sons donated 188 acres (76 ha) to the National Trust in 1929, to which in 1963 Egham Urban District Council added 110 acres (45 ha) of woodland on Coopers Hill, which rises sharply from the river and is topped by the Commonwealth Air Forces Memorial.
Overlooking the river and alluvial waterlogged water meadows, the north part of Cooper’s Hill, known as Cooper’s Hill Slopes, is an area of Bagshot sands partly overlain by London clay, traditionally an area of deciduous woodland. Part of the slopes are designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest and site of Nature Conservation Interest, for its ancient semi-natural woodland.
The 1.2 acres (0.486 ha) of the Kennedy Memorial is bounded by a timber post-and-rail fence along the eastern entrance boundary, metal railings along the northern edge of the woodland and north-west and western boundary of the site and by barbed wire and hedgerows along the southern boundary of the woodland. The eastern boundary, overlooking Long Mede, has a ha-ha so as not to disturb views out, for it was important that there should be no apparent barriers between American and British soil.
ENTRANCES, APPROACHES AND VIEWS
The single entrance is through a wicket gate from paths across the water meadows from Windsor Road and the National Trust’s car park by Lutyens’s lodges to the north.
The woodland part of the landscape is deliberately self-contained, but from the path ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ and the two seats, specifically placed in meadowland at its end, there are views to the north-east across the Thames valley.
STRUCTURES
The memorial stone (List entry number 1031592, listed Grade II) is a seven-ton block of Portland stone, 3m long and 1.5m high, on a granite base, carved from a fourteen-ton block with a slight entasis to correct optical distortion and to give the impression of a great weight floating above the ground. Jellicoe described the stone as ‘a catafalque balanced on the shoulders of the populace’ (in Spens, Complete Works, p.93). He asked the sculptor, Alan Collins, to spread the lettering across the entire stone to make it appear less like an inscription. The words include a quotation from the Declaration of Freedom made by President Kennedy as part of his inaugural address in 1961: ‘THIS ACRE OF ENGLISH GROUND WAS GIVEN/ TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY/ THE PEOPLE OF BRITAIN IN MEMORY OF/ JOHN F. KENNEDY/, BORN 29 MAY 1917/ PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 1961-63/ DIED BY AN ASSASSIN’S HAND 22 NOVEMBER 1963/ “LET EVERY NATION KNOW WHETHER IT WISHES US WELL OR ILL/ THAT WE SHALL PAY ANY PRICE BEAR ANY BURDEN MEET ANY HARDSHIP/ SUPPORT ANY FRIEND OR OPPOSE ANY FOE IN ORDER TO ASSURE/ THE SURVIVAL AND SUCCESS OF LIBERTY” from the inaugural address/ of President Kennedy 20 January 1961’.
The memorial also includes two benches of Portland stone set to the north-west.
LANDSCAPING
The existing landscape on which the memorial was laid out comprised deciduous woodland and grassland, with hawthorn hedgerows, to which conifers and rhododendrons had been added in the C19. The rhododendrons have subsequently been removed. Geoffrey Jellicoe had established himself as Britain’s leading landscape architect by 1964, and the memorial occupies a pivotal place in his work, where he first began to explore the subconscious. He conceived the memorial as a journey from the open meadow by the river, through a dark glade of woodland trees, to a clearing and thence to a viewing platform, set in meadowland, with long views across the English countryside, where in contrast to the intensity of the memorial stone you can see the richness of British life, history and democracy unveiled before you. Jellicoe’s immediate inspiration was John Bunyan’s 'Pilgrim’s Progress' allegory of the progress through life, but the design owes something to C16 interpretations of allegorical landscapes and Japanese garden design. He also acknowledged the inspiration of paintings by Giovanni Bellini for the relationship between natural landscape and precise geometry and by Giorgionne for the duality of its composition. He received the commission from the British Government a few days before making his first visit to Japan, where he came on the idea of a landscape as a continuous progress and to appreciate the Japanese reverence for inanimate objects such as beautifully crafted pieces of stone. He wrote that ‘this highly sophisticated and precise design is fitted into a landscape that is very much the reverse … There is no compromise of neatly cut grass and trim flower beds … Much is known about the creation of a normal public park or garden, but little as yet about the re-creation of natural scenery in such a way that it survives the human element.’ For Jellicoe ‘The Kennedy Memorial became my own adventure into a new field, of Allegory’ (Spens, Complete Works, p.92).
As the pilgrim passes through the wicket gate from the meadow, they enter the allegory of life, death and spirit and begin to climb a steep pathway formed of some 50,000 individually hewn setts of Portuguese granite, symbolic of the multitude of pilgrims, laid dry save for the risers to make 50 steps, one for each of the American states. Jellicoe asked the stonemason not to lay the setts too regularly, but ‘like the crowds at a football match, where each one is an individual’ (Harvey, Reflections, p.18). In the C21 the setts of the pathway were augmented in places by a border of large pebbles in order to provide a wider surface to the path.
The woodland, reminiscent of Dante’s ‘dark wood’ and representing the cycle of life as well as the virility and mystery of nature along with the passing seasons, was an existing mixed English woodland, which had been lightly managed by the National Trust to appear as natural as possible. Trees include ash, field maple, hazels and oaks. Jellicoe allowed some trees to survive beyond their reasonable maturity to emphasise the life cycle, and thickened the existing rhododendrons since it was important that there should be no views out until the pilgrim reaches the top. This effect has since been diluted with the removal of the rhododendrons. A number of diseased trees have been felled, or left as monoliths, in recent years.
The granite setts widen and shallow steps of Portland stone make a pausing space ahead of the clearing where the formal monument stands. The monument itself, also of Portland stone, is already listed (see above). Beside it is a hawthorn tree, symbol of Kennedy’s Catholicism and harking back to the legend that Joseph of Arimathea planted his staff at Glastonbury, whence are descended all English thorn trees. The original tree was replaced in 2018. Behind the stone the American scarlet oak Quercus coccinea was chosen by Jellicoe since it turns a vivid red in late November at the time of Kennedy’s death, and was planted by Jacqueline Kennedy.
To the north of the stone block a terrace walk, separated from the monument and formed of large Portland stone paving slabs set with an uneven edge, leads out of the wood north-westwards. It leads to two stone ‘seats of contemplation’ at the top of short flights of stone slab steps, set in open meadowland on the side of the hill and backed by thorn bushes, with views to the north-east across the Thames valley west of London. For Jellicoe it symbolised Jacob’s Ladder (as denoted in his drawing and representing the path between heaven and earth) or a walk into the future as well as a place of contemplation. He marked the seats as ‘the president and consort’ (First Lady), or as a King and Queen inspired by the figures by Henry Moore at Shawhead. The ha-ha of an earth bank and ditch (with metal railings in the ditch) separating the site from the surrounding countryside runs parallel to the path, but below it so as to make as little impact as possible. The whole site is symbolic of the special relationship between Britain and the United States, which was particularly close in the 1960s. The Architectural Review of October 1965, p.286 describes how the hill was to be maintained as rough grass ‘and will be maintained as such to match the cattle-grazed surrounding pasture, so that the whole countryside, the variously planted and broadly treated hillside together with what can be seen from it – a partly formalized and evocative sample of the natural landscape – is itself the memorial’.