Wednesday 6^th December 2017

We had a lovely day today – chatting with Gareth and Nicole Beale about their exciting new project “Discovering England’s burial spaces”. We are genuinely really pleased that they have chosen us as one of their case studies. As they develop a model for community groups to adopt for graveyard surveys and recording, we hope our experiences and the lessons we have learned as a small local heritage group will prove helpful to Gareth and Nicole.

We had an interesting discussion about authority files for describing gravestones – physical appearance, condition monitoring and design features – as well as ideas on survey form structures, and the practicalities of using mobile apps over paper forms. A very important aspect of the project is that of affordable data storage and archiving which is something we are very concerned about. 

The recent CBA (Yorkshire) showcase for community heritage groups had made us very aware of the need for sharing good practice and project findings not only between local groups, but also with academics. Publication and dissemination is a vital component of research, yet local case studies are susceptible to being unnoticed and unappreciated beyond their local community.   

Ralph decidedly unimpressed with discussions on database modelling

  We look forward to taking part in the project.

Jane Lunnon