Sanctuary Wood

Just outside Ypres in Belgium, at a place called Sanctuary Wood, which in WW1 was anything

but a sanctuary, there is a privately run museum of collected artifacts left over from the

trench warfare. Among a complete jumble of stuff, shells, grenades, dugout paraphernalia,

you name it, are what I took to be these trench support poles, just stacked up against the

wall, rusting colourfully away and looking like a Bridget Riley painting. There are preserved

trenches here too, where the two fronts were within shouting distance of each other. It's a

sad, lonely, largely unvisited spot, where by 1916 the Wood had been replaced by scorched

stumps of trees, the land by a quagmire of mud and blood.

Also here is a room dedicated to the work of a local WW1 photographer working in stereo

images. These are housed in half a dozen or so old Victorian desktop stereo viewers, which,

among many landscapes of utter devastation, reveal some appalling 3D scenes of wounded

combatants. This priceless and virtually unseen material ought to be regarded as a national

treasure. Instead, it's deteriorating and fading away. I've tried to interest the owners in

digitally conserving this precious material, but to no avail. The 3D viewing machines themselves

are also becoming broken and forlorn - a sad end to a unique archive.

Just outside Ypres in Belgium, at a place called Sanctuary Wood, which in WW1 was anything

but a sanctuary, there is a privately run museum of collected artifacts left over from the trench

warfare. Among a complete jumble of stuff, shells, grenades, dugout paraphernalia, you name

it, are what I took to be these trench support poles, just stacked up against the wall, rusting

colourfully away and looking like a Bridget Riley painting. There are preserved trenches here too,

where the two fronts were within shouting distance of each other. It's a sad, lonely, largely

unvisited spot, where by 1916 the Wood had been replaced by scorched stumps of trees, the

land by a quagmire of mud and blood.

Also here is a room dedicated to the work of a local WW1 photographer working in stereo

images. These are housed in half a dozen or so old Victorian desktop stereo viewers, which,

among many landscapes of utter devastation, reveal some appalling 3D scenes of wounded

combatants. This priceless and virtually unseen material ought to be regarded as a national

treasure. Instead, it's deteriorating and fading away. I've tried to interest the owners in digitally

conserving this precious material, but to no avail. The 3D viewing machines themselves are also

becoming broken and forlorn - a sad end to a unique archive.