Have you ever wondered if there was a list of benches with public dedications on them? Well, I haven’t, but there is one and it’s called OpenBenches.
It’s similar to Open Plaques, which is crowd-sourced list of plaques on the sides of buildings commemorating notable people or events that happened. OpenBenches, meanwhile, is for people who may not have been notable, but were loved and missed by their friends and relatives after their passing.
Anyone can submit a bench, as long as you can upload a photo of it that is geotagged. With most photos being taken with phones these days, this isn’t much of an issue. Of course, the bench should have a dedication on it, and you’ll need to type out what the dedication says. Submissions can be made anonymously, or by logging in using an account on Twitter/X, Facebook, GitHub or WordPress.
There’s now over 30,000 benches on OpenBenches, all with a location, a photo and a copy of the text of the dedication. However, over 28,000 of them are in the UK, with few elsewhere. That may be because dedicating a bench to someone is more of a British thing, or because its developers (Terence Eden and Elizabeth Eden) are British.
There aren’t any benches listed on there in my town of Sowerby Bridge yet. I think there are some eligible benches nearby, so maybe I should take the time to go and take photos of them to add them.