Hunting the Past

Our Wednesday trip to Windsor Castle had an interesting side excursion related to it. Years ago, my boyfriend's grandfather had been on the way to the castle himself, sat down on a bench near the train station to rest... and passed away on the spot.

My boyfriend's father had been to the spot himself with his mother, and had taken a photo of The Bench. This photo, in fact:


Armed with a printout of the photo and a description of the area, we set out to try to find the spot ourselves, if indeed The Bench itself actually still existed.

There were two obvious signs that suggested right away that it probably did not. First was a large ferris wheel set up in a park right by the train station. (The rough description seemed to hint at the park, but surely would have mentioned the ferris wheel had it been there years earlier.) Second was a brand new monument in the area, erected in honor of Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee -- which is being celebrated this year in 2012. New benches seemed to have been installed throughout the park area, of a style that didn't remotely match the one we had in our photo. We walked around for some time trying to make sense of the new layout, but ultimately we would have to draw our clues from the photograph.

The trouble was, there were precious few clues in the photo. There were plenty of tall bushes plainly visible... but of course, no guarantees that the bushes would be there or look at all the same today. There were a few visible planks of a wooden fence visible behind the bushes. There was a brick wall -- a sort of archway, maybe? -- barely visible in the far background behind the bushes. And a sign of some kind on the wall, but unfortunately one too blurry to read clearly. (We needed a Chloe O'Brian to upload the photo to for "enhancement.")

We kept searching, with me on perhaps three separate occasions declaring that we had to be very close to the right spot. But finally we decided to abandon the park and move back in the direction of the train station.

That was when we noticed a street on the far side of the elevated tracks, lined with a long row of brick archways. And on the side of the street nearer to us, a tall line of bushes that almost totally obstructed the view as we drew closer. We now started walking parallel to the road, looking for a break in the bushes that might reveal the planks of the fence. And then, yes -- we saw that too! Clearly, this was the right area.

But also clearly, The Bench was gone. It had been removed some time in the intervening years, and no new bench had been put in its place. There were in fact no benches at all along this entire stretch of road.

And yet there was still the final clue, the blurry sign. Even if we couldn't read it in the photo, might we be able to look over at the brick wall in the present day and find the match for the size and shape of it? Soon enough, we were at least able to explain the mystery of sign. The archways were all garages for different places of business, on a street lined with small warehouse-like locations. There was sign after sign, each marking a different business.

But unfortunately, though it appeared the street, the bushes, and the fence had all survived a remodeling of the area, the particular business in the photo -- like The Bench itself -- was just no longer there. We scanned all the signs in the area, but clearly none was a match for the old photo.

And sadly, that meant the end of the search. I half-heartedly suggested taking a photo of a spot along the road, but it would have been an arbitrary choice with only a slim chance of representing the exact place where The Bench had once stood. So we simply got back on the train to London and left Windsor behind.

But while we may not have been able to take a modern day photo to mirror the old one, I feel 100% certain that at some moment while we walked up that street, we passed over the very spot where The Bench had once stood, where my boyfriend's grandfather passed away years ago. It was a brush against a small but personal bit of England history.