W e have all seen the inscriptions on benches in beauty spots, village greens and cricket grounds. Sometimes we have even thought about where our own memorial bench would go as we flop thankfully into the seat to enjoy the view.

Perhaps looking out to sea from a coastal path, or in our own village, or at the top of a hill we have walked up every day?

Graham and Ria Lay have built up their own business by making these wishes come true.

Oxford Memorial Benches started almost by accident 15 years ago when a neighbour in Freeland died suddenly while exercising at the gym. Mr Lay, 60, said: "He had helped me through my first redundancy. That was our first memorial bench, in 1998."

Before that Mr Lay worked as a motorsport engineer for March in Bicester, then Leyton House and finally for Yamaha in Milton Keynes.

“I was an apprentice at the Cowley car factory and then worked in motor racing for five years. In those five years I was made redundant four times.”

Mrs Lay, 55, had been made redundant at the same time from Singer sewing machines in Witney and they decided to set up a joint business.

Mr Lay’s mother Kathleen had run a plant nursery from her home in Freeland and the couple decided to revive that, using her greenhouses. Having learnt carpentry from his father, he sold wooden garden products and installed pergolas and decking.

After a five years it was clear that carpentry was more profitable than plants and the nursery closed. By then his mother had moved out and they moved in, demolishing the greenhouses to make way for an extension to provide a home office and creating a large, warm workplace in the garden from his father's carpentry workshop.

More local clients arrived by word of mouth, but once the Internet took off after 2003, orders flooded in from all over the world — with a bit of help from the rest of the family.

Their website was created by son Daniel, an engineer with BMW, and son-in-law Dave Watson, a graphic designer, who also advised on branding to stress the high-quality of their benches, which start at £600.

Mr Watson also used some of their countless emails and letters of thanks to give potential customers an idea of the outcome.

He said: “On a daily basis they have conversations with people who are going through a very difficult time in their lives. They provide a sensitive and personal service.”

But not all the benches reflect a tragic story. Many represent people who have had a long life, while a few — less than five per cent — commemorate joyous occasions such as a golden wedding.

Oxford Preservation Trust, for example, commissioned two for the redeveloped site of Oxford Castle in New Road and other clients have ordered garden benches with their children's names.

Customers include the Crown Prince of Bahrain, the National Trust and English Heritage.

Sir Jackie Stewart has ordered about 40 in memory of fellow racing drivers who died in the late 1960s, before safety measures were introduced and Mrs Lay was delighted to see the benches in a recent BBC TV documentary about the legendary race driver.

The Freeland-made benches can be seen in several Oxford colleges — inclulding Brasenose, Jesus and New, on the bank of the river North Esk in Aberdeenshire and on the South West Coast Path in Cornwall.

The Lays help clients choose a suitable motif, to the extent of using their springer spaniel Fern as a model for a widow who had no photographs of a much-loved pet.

A Tottenham Hotspur fan has his favourite team engraved on a seat in the quiet garden at the BMW factory in Cowley, while Rennie Mackintosh script was used for a bench at The Hill House in Scotland, considered to be the Glasgow designer’s finest domestic creation.

Mr Lay said: “The ethos of our business is that it is highly personal. It's a cottage industry, almost literally.”

They enjoy their work, although they are often dealing with tragedy — and with lives dislocated by grief. Pointing to a beautifully carved oak bench, Mrs Lay said: "This is for two brothers who committed suicide, for their mother. I think it was one of the worst things for me.

“The lady came here from Southampton just after we had discovered a leak in the kitchen, which we were obviously a bit annoyed about. I have children myself and when she told me the story — that her second son had committed suicide several years after his brother — I had to go off and walk around the house. It just put my life in perspective and I realised that my leak did not matter.”

They both love helping people through the grieving process, although Mr Lay sometimes finds himself “almost overcome” when he hears people's stories.

“I carved two footballs and a basketball on a bench in memory of three young men who died in a car accident. I delivered the bench to all three mothers. There are no words in the language to describe the emotion of those mothers seeing the names of their sons on that bench.”

Oxford Memorial Benches 01993 881464 www.oxmembench.co.uk