1^st May 2019

Dr Roger Martlew kindly gave up his morning to try plotting Conistone churchyard with GPS, but the trees and the church building made the whole exercise impossible.

Roger and Sue setting the GPS equipment on the north side

It was extremely frustrating, but we all agreed that we would have to resort to old-fashioned triangulation with tapes in order to produce an accurate plan of the churchyard.

A lonely GPS unit working silently but hampered by the trees

However, RTI photography was more successful today with good progress made on the box and table tombs on the south side. 

Teamwork and co-ordinated movement is essential in RTI !

Meanwhile, three of us focused on cleaning up some memorial stones ready for taking clear photographs. I should mention at this point that our policy is to always avoid “cleaning” a stone if it is lichen-covered. We never remove lichen as every churchyard has a unique lichen growth. But we do remove moss if it can be removed without damaging the stone surface – we gently use an archaeologist’s trowel for moss “carpets” which tend to virtually roll away. 

But we then use plastic pickers (again using archaeologist’s tools) to gently tease out moss and soil from inside the carved lettering. Ivy is never pulled away from the stones – we may later consider cutting ivy at the roots and letting it die off for a few months before we investigate whether we can gently peel it off those stones which are significantly overgrown. We never wash or scrub a gravestone.

 

Being a taphophile can be so much fun!

We enjoyed talking to some visitors to the churchyard, including passing walkers, as well as local people. It’s always gratifying when local people in particular, take an interest and say they appreciate us recording the churchyard for posterity.

Jane Lunnon