There are four original copies of the charter signed by King John and his barons in 1215. Two of them may be found in the British Library, the others at Lincoln Castle and Salisbury Cathedral. So I didn’t see one yesterday when I went with a friend to Runnymede. She hadn’t been before and I hadn’t been for fifty years.
We parked by the river and walked to Writ in Water, an installation built in 2018 by Mark Wallinger and Studio Octopi. Around the circumference of the central pool clause thirty-nine of the Magna Carta is written in mirror writing so that it can be read in its reflection: “no free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions… except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land”.
The oculus reminded us of the Pantheon in Rome and we wondered how deep the pool is. Then we walked up hill through a meadow and woodland to the Air Forces memorial opened by the Queen in 1953.
It is maintained by The Commonwealth War Graves Commission and on the stone walls the names of more than 20,000 airmen who died in World War Two are engraved. From its elevated position there is a fine view across London to the City and Canary Wharf, the capital that these men and women died to save from conquest.
We walked back down towards the river passing the rotunda built by the American Bar Association in 1957, supposedly on the site where the charter was signed. A little further on a path winds up into the woods reaching a clearing with this memorial to President Kennedy.
The last feature we visited was in our car park at the end of our three hour circular walk; a bronze of the Queen wearing Garter robes, inspired by Pietro Annigoni’s 1954 and 1969 portraits, unveiled in 2015.
