Wednesday 20 October 2019

Sue and I spent half a day back at Holy Trinity churchyard, Skipton. Sue started on the measuring of gravestones and managed to complete all the uprights, before moving on to a row of ledgers.

I was able to crack on some photography – as always with ledgers, cleaning them in preparation for photos took longer than taking the actual shots but at least it was a still day and there was no breeze to blow back the autumn leaves. 

By 2pm we were so cold  we had to call it a day – a good excuse to get a late lunch at the new Bobbins coffee shop in Embsay. 


Jane Lunnon

Thursday 24^th October 2019 


We attended a day workshop at the King’s Manor, University of York. Our colleagues from the Friends of Raikes Road Burial Ground came along too and we were delighted to meet up with members of some of the other groups working with the project. 

DEBS workshop at Kings Manor, York - photo courtesy of Jean Robinson

Toby Pillatt introduced us to his colleagues on the DEBS project, including Dr Debbie Maxwell, Professor Harold Mytum and Professor Julian Richards. We spent a thoroughly enjoyable day being updated on the progress of the DEBS project and trying out some of the prototype resources.

All too short a time was spent in the churchyard of nearby St Olave’s – for health and safety reasons normally closed to the public. Here we tried out the latest version of Harold’s paper-based forms for recording gravestones, as well as the mobile app. 


The latter is still only in the very early stages of development but we can see great potential in it, despite some misgivings. We were able to make some suggestions on how it can be developed further.  Harold’s paper forms, on the other hand, are pretty much in their final draft. They are easy to use, and Jennifer and I sailed through them, entering data on a couple of gravestones. 


Back in the lecture room we tried out some data entry onto the prototype database and made some suggestions as to how it can be improved for use by community groups such as ours. 


The day finished with an informal chat about the potential of the project and ideas for the next phase.

Jane Lunnon