Wednesday 24^th August 2016

A warm, sunny summer’s day for our little team today, which gave Sue the chance to sport her new pink sun-hat.

We had planned to do some RTI on the north side where 3 gravestones had proved difficult to read with the naked eye last week. But the sun was so bright, throwing a good shadow, that these were very legible today, so we were able to get away with taking straightforward photographs of them before the sun moved too far over and the inscriptions became difficult to read again.

Using flags to indicate un-marked graves

 The rest of the day we spent measuring and photographing on the north side, and plotting in a large number of un-marked grave plots, of which there are many located within quite discrete areas on the north side.    

The summer sunshine brought out many visitors – relatives tending graves, as well as tourists out for a country walk, passing by and popping in to see the church and have a chat.

The next two weeks we will have a break, but work will resume again after that. In the meantime we are giving a lot of consideration to the next phase of the project – that is how to use and analyse the data we are collecting.  

Jane Lunnon

17 August 2016

Another busy day measuring, surveying, photographing and recording gravestones on the north side of St Mary’s churchyard.

Today we were joined by Gina, visiting us from Sussex. She learnt some new skills, made new friends, and enjoyed learning about the people who used to live here.

Gina enjoying her unusual holiday activity

We had to be careful today - we have often found ants' nests scattered around the churchyard - but today we found a wasps' nest in the ground - which Tony marked with a wooden post so we were reminded not to get too close!

Ground-Burrowing wasps' nest

 

Delivery of vital supplies - CAKE!!

The weather was changeable, but the most annoying thing was that there was at times too much sunshine!! We complain about the rain when we can’t work on the survey; we complain about the wind, because it disrupts the triangulation tapes; and now we complain about the sunshine because the sunlight reflects on the camera lens. This afternoon no matter how the shade-board was positioned we couldn’t avoid the low sun shining directly into the picture. So two gravestones have to be left for next time – when they will be photographed in the morning.

Nevertheless we had a good day - and enjoyed ourselves as usual!

Jane Lunnon