#210: The Angel of the North

In the arms of an angel

Eleanor Scorah
Objects
3 min readAug 26, 2018

--

An angel the height of a five storey building looks out over the A1. It’s a familiar sight. A symbol of this area and it’s regeneration since 1998, and even if it took some time for local residents to get used to, it’s now won the hearts of many.

Built by Anthony Gormley on the site of a former colliery pithead baths, the angel is impressive from afar, but even more so up close. Having driven past it countless times, it was only when we recently decided to pull over and climb the mound it stands on, that I could truly comprehend the angel’s size.

The sculpture stands noble and powerful without making you feel any smaller beneath it. Its wings protect you, while seeming to acknowledge that you too are strong. It’s an angel that watches patiently without intervening, trusting you to be strong alone and yet always there, always ready, its wings outstretched to welcome you.

“People are always asking, why an angel? The only response I can give is that no-one has ever seen one and we need to keep imagining them. The angel has three functions — firstly a historic one to remind us that below this site coal miners worked in the dark for two hundred years, secondly to grasp hold of the future, expressing our transition from the industrial to the information age, and lastly to be a focus for our hopes and fears — a sculpture is an evolving thing.” Anthony Gormley

I wonder why, as Gormley says, we need to keep imagining angels. I wonder what the comfort of their presence is. Of course, there are angelic figures throughout religions, but this metal angel is so industrial, so distinct from those images of golden haloes, that, to me, it does not sit clearly within a religious context.

I think the clue instead is in the title. It is an angel not of a religion but of a region, the North. It is not a spiritual figure that will exist in the ether, but a physical embodiment of a very physical landscape, a place that you can exist within. For many, this sculpture is a sign of coming home. It is a sign that you have reached the North, a place where the vowels are flat, the air is cold and the food is warm, a friendly place that I love to call home.

I don’t believe in angels, but I believe in the powerful impact of place. This angel, this huge object, to me, is the feeling I get when I see that we’re following those blue signs to ‘The NORTH’. It’s the feeling when the walls become dry-stone and Emley Moor Mast rears into view.

I may originally be from Yorkshire and only now living in the shadow of this North East angel, but the North has always been my home, and the angel knows this, and it welcomes me with open arms.

Eleanor is a writer using her skills in overthinking to write a weekly blog post about everyday objects. To read more, check out her blog Object, a collaboration with fellow Medium blogger Katie.

--

--

Eleanor Scorah
Objects
Editor for

Writing by day, reading by night, or sometimes even a mix of the two.