Wednesday 5th June 2019
Weather a little unpredictable and variable today, but we
nevertheless turned up at Holy Trinity Church, Skipton, to do a morning’s work
there.
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| Jean checks grave-IDs while the team try to read inscriptions |
More inscriptions were read and checked against the
transcriptions made some years ago by another group, before they had the benefit of LED torches.
It is well-known, of course, that the
simple technique of shining an oblique light on a gravestone can be very
effective in making it more legible – but there is certainly an added advantage
if an LED light is deployed. Nevertheless the list of gravestones which will
need RTI is growing – torchlight throws ugly shadows across the stone which
would be unsuitable for the formal photographic record, and also only illuminates
a small portion of the gravestone at a time.
In the afternoon 3 of us headed off for
Conistone-with-Kilnsey for an afternoon surveying the churchyard there. The
clouds were getting greyer, and Conistone always seems to feel colder than the
surrounding area anyway – we think it has its own microclimate. But we managed
a couple of hours surveying before the rain chased us into the shelter of the
church, where after half an hour we decided the rain was well and truly set in,
and we had to go home. But at least we managed to record 4 gravestones.
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| Beautifully co-ordinated mother-and-daughter team prepare gravestones for photography |
It’s an interesting exercise to participate in two
churchyard surveys run by different people. The approach is slightly different
in terms of the record-keeping techniques, and approach to recording. The
Conistone survey is following the same model as the one we ran at Embsay – Having
started with a plan of the burial site, and ensured each known burial plot has
an id number, in the field we take measurements, check the location against the
plan, photograph the memorials, and record a few details such as condition and masons’
marks. But the majority of the recording work takes place indoors, working from
the photographs. This ensures we can not only work in comfort, and will not be
weather-dependant for this second phase, but we also find it helps us to focus
on details and gives us more leisure to discuss each gravestone. It also means
we can work from the RTI results for those memorials that are difficult to
read.
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| Using a LED torch at Skipton |
The Skipton survey works on a model that is more commonly
used – the emphasis so far has been almost exclusively on reading the inscriptions directly
from the gravestones, often with the aid of torchlight. It can often be a
struggle with the illegible or partly illegible gravestones, and we shall have
to wait for the RTI to be done, so that we can return to those which proved
impossible or difficult to read in the field.
Both methods, of course, have their advantages. It would be
interesting to know how other groups carry out their own churchyard surveys by
comparison.
Jane Lunnon
