Tom Pearman was commissioned by Sefton Council to create a series of 100 permanent site markers across Bootle Cemetery, marking the cemetery’s centenary.
The artworks were designed both to celebrate the history of the site and to improve wayfinding and sightlines through the grounds.
Rather than treating the cemetery as an isolated place, the project explores its relationship with the wider town of Bootle and the people, buildings and everyday journeys that connect the two.
A bus journey through Bootle
The central idea developed around the notion of a bus journey through Bootle.
Tom worked with local participants to identify buildings, landmarks and places that held particular significance within the town. Discussion focused on the way bus conductors and local residents often used informal or colloquial names for stops, creating a parallel geography based on memory, humour and shared knowledge.
One example was the stop near the Richmond Sausages factory, which was remembered by some as the “place of mystery”, reflecting local humour around what might have gone into the sausages.
These kinds of stories helped shape a route through Bootle based not only on official landmarks but on personal associations and collective memory.
Local landmarks and memories
The individual markers reference a wide range of subjects connected with Bootle, including local architecture, industry, food, transport and everyday life.
Each marker uses a simple graphic language to represent a particular object, place or story.
The series creates a dispersed portrait of the town, with the cemetery becoming one point within a much larger network of local history and memory.
Morse code
Morse code became another important visual and interpretive element within the project.
Small plaques use dots and dashes to encode text, reflecting the wartime history associated with the cemetery and wider area.
The same visual language was also used to construct imagery, with Morse-like marks becoming a form of drawing within some of the artworks.
This created a connection between written communication, graphic pattern and the narrative content of the markers.
Materials and fabrication
The 100 markers were produced using a combination of cast relief concrete, vitreous enamel and CNC-machined industrial plastic.
Different fabrication methods allowed the imagery to shift between raised relief, recessed forms, bold graphic outlines and detailed surface information.
The resulting objects share a common scale and visual identity while allowing considerable variation across the series.
Centenary and wayfinding
Installed throughout the cemetery grounds, the markers were conceived as both artworks and navigational features.
Their repeated forms create points of orientation within the landscape while gradually revealing stories connected with Bootle’s social, industrial and wartime history.
The project therefore combines commemoration, wayfinding and local storytelling, using 100 individual works to mark 100 years of the cemetery.
