Cooper's Hill and Runnymede as Sites of Memory

Before the 1640s, the name of Cooper's Hill would have been barely known beyond the immediate vicinity of the small town of Egham in Surrey, on whose western side it rises. ¹ Nor was the name of the meadow beneath it, Runnymede, much more widely recognised, beyond the circles of antiquaries and legal historians who might recall its association with Magna Carta. That Runnymede is today a toponym recognised throughout and beyond the English-speaking world owes much to one man, Sir John Denham, and one poem, Coopers Hill. Situated roughly midway between the baronial conflicts of the early thirteenth century and our own era, Denham's poem marks the emergence of Runnymede as a lieu de mémoire, and inaugurates a tradition of landscape poetry and memorialisation in this micro-region that has steadily gathered force over almost four centuries. ² Not only did Coopers Hill play a crucial role in the rise to fame of this strip of Thames floodplain; it has also had an impact on the physical environment itself, which over the last century has been transformed into a memorial park. This chapter situates Denham's poem at the hinge of this landscape's cultural history, glancing both backward and forward to construct a biography of place.