Wednesday 15^th April 2015 

6 of us were due to start RTI photography at St Mary’s churchyard today – the beginning of an exciting project to record all the graves in the village church.

But the unpredictable Yorkshire weather was against us – having been a beautiful spring the day before, Wednesday was grey, damp and windy.

Nevertheless we had a productive day, and as things turned out it was probably a good thing as we used the time to sit down and think through some of the logistics of the project in more detail. We discussed the format of our record sheets, what we wanted to record, why & how, in order to effectively combine the different aims and objectives of the 2 groups involved in the project.

We wandered around the churchyard to assess how many of the gravestones would present particular difficulties, and were pleased to find they were relatively few in number.

After an early lunch – and some of Sue’s delicious chocolate cake (unfortunately I didn’t get to one of the flapjacks in time) – we ventured outside again into a dreek afternoon, still too blowy for RTI. Sue and Alan explored the site to establish the best locations for the fixed reference points to be used when plotting exact locations, while the rest of us started filling out some  of the record sheets to see if they needed further refinement – so we selected a row of stones to measure and give physical descriptions. It proved a useful exercise as we found a few extra pieces of data which needed to be included.

We were getting cold though, and even a little wet in the drizzle, so called it a day mid-afternoon. And wouldn’t you just know it – the sun came out and the breeze dropped about half an hour later!

Jane Lunnon