'Why I love medieval Graffiti' by @jessikart

(This blog-post by @jessikart was first published on the Standard Issue website, and is archived here because it is too funny and insightful to just disappear into the ether as the Standard Issue website is taken down - Ed)

Why I  medieval graffiti

If you want to know what made the medievals tick, says Jess Macdonald, ditch the history books and check out their wildstylin’.

"We all know what archaeology is. It’s Tony Robinson standing in a muddy ditch in Somerset while a bearded man froths orgasmically over a shard of Anglo Saxon pottery, or it’s Harrison Ford suavely dealing with Nazis, Biblical treasures and getting into punch-ups while women of a certain age fan themselves. But not for me…

I have to insert my disclaimer here and say I’m not an archaeologist, a historian, or even someone who’s studied the past in any meaningful way. I’m just a stay-at-home mum (with both children at school, so I think we can tag ‘lazy-arse’ in there too), who happened to fall in love with the archaeology of medieval graffiti.

Yes, it’s a thing. Honest. No, wait, come baaaack! This stuff is fascinating! It’s across the walls of churches and cathedrals all over the UK – and it is mindblowing. Step inside any religious building from the last 800 years and the first thing you’ll see are the monuments to the elite, the rich, the powerful, the top five per cent of medieval society. The tombs, the statues, the stained glass, the plaques.

A ship, seemingly with designs upon becoming a castle.

So what’s missing? Us. The commoners, the plebs, the real people. No sign that anyone like us ever worshipped, was christened, married, buried or even visited. But if you take an LED torch and shine it across the surface of the stone walls… magic happens.

It sort of started for me way back in the mists of time, when I was a slightly podgy 10-year-old on holiday in the village of Salthouse in North Norfolk, where the local church, St Nicholas, is crammed full of graffiti: ships, and names and dates going back hundreds of years.

Where it properly started though, was hearing about the Norfolk Medieval Graffiti Survey on Twitter nearly two years ago. Completely made up of volunteers, it was aiming (still is!) to visit and survey every medieval church in Norfolk (more than 650, the highest concentration anywhere in the world) and accurately record the graffiti found there.

There are names and dates and ships and prayers and music and curses and compass-drawn designs we call demon traps and architectural sketches and wonky faces and absolutely bloody hilariously bad depictions of St George slaying the dragon.

 

A collection of compass drawn designs.

Today, these markings are difficult to see. You have to shine a torch at certain angles to highlight the faintest lines from centuries ago. From what’s been discovered though, we know that at the time they were created, they would have been just as obvious as a spraypainted “Daz shags goats” is on a bus shelter today. At any point, the church authorities could have destroyed them. But they didn’t. Even allowing for the widespread ‘restoration’ the Victorians undertook, in the county of Norfolk alone, more than 28,000 inscriptions have been recorded and we’re only really halfway through the 650+ medieval churches here.

To me, it’s been a complete revelation. To think that graffiti inside a church was once seen as both accepted and acceptable. I can stand right where a stonemason stood, 800 years ago and trace the lines of a design for a window. I don’t understand the slightest thing about the design, obviously, but to think that something so personal, so human is just so there and I can actually touch it, makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck, I feel giddy, I stare and then usually, because I’m such a tragic case, I burst into tears at the wonder of it.

This is one of my personal favourites. A beautiful little rose, only 3cm in size, etched into the wall. Yes, etched into. The reason it looks 3D is entirely down to clever lighting and photography and witchcraft. No, I didn’t take this photo; how did you guess (my tendency to descend into snotbubbling weepery means I’m utterly useless at taking photos, so I leave that to others)?

These little marks matter. For some, it might be the only trace that they have left on the world, their only testament to existence. They were people, just like us, with their own petty little concerns and worries and we know so little about them. We know so little, precisely because they were The Little People, not the great and the good.

 

A collection of faces from those making a small mark on history.

In 500 years, people will look back and wonder why we were so obsessed with Kim Kardashian’s arse, or whether David Cameron really did pork a porker. It might be in the news and widely reported upon but it doesn’t really reflect my life in any way.

Imagine then, if you could leave one lasting mark of your life, perhaps anonymously, perhaps not, that those people could see and have some understanding of your earthly years upon this planet. What would you leave? What would be important enough to you that you would carve it into the stone?

That’s what archaeology is to me. Finding these past lives and trying to understand them (getting flustered over Harrison Ford is optional, but I’ve found it helps)."

@jessikart
http://putupwithrain.blogspot.co.uk

The terror of technology...

This has been a week of technology. We are, the media tells us, on the brink of a robotics revolution (N.B. this does not preclude the possibility of other revolutions happening as well. Just saying...). A robotics revolution that will bring change to the human condition that is entirely unprecedented in our past - or at least since the discovery of fire - or the discovery that you can ferment grapes into a half decent Pinot Grigio. There is talk of 'robot rights', and the usual sound-bite backlash of the media hungry, or Daily Mail readers who didn't read beyond paragraph one in the first place. Science fiction is, almost, science fact. All a bit scary really. Technology moves on so very rapidly that who knows what will be invented in the next few years? Cold fusion perhaps? Electronic superconductors? Maybe we'll even get the long awaited hover-boots? They've been promised for long enough after all...

However, technology is most certainly our friend. It allows us to actually do what we are doing. In fact the growth in the whole area of studying historic graffiti is all down to the advent of new technologies. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, when Violet Pritchard was carrying out the research for her book, English Medieval Graffiti, she was essentially crippled by the technology available to her at the time. All of her recording was done by taking actual rubbings of the graffiti that she came across, in much the same way that people took rubbings of the monumental brasses. It was slow, it was inaccurate, and the results weren't brilliant. The rubbings only worked well on the most deeply cut inscriptions, leaving the more discrete inscriptions unrecorded. It also led to confusion. With thousands of individual pieces of paper, the odd mis-filed rubbing was fairly common place. Those who have gone to Marton in Lincolnshire looking for the amazing late medieval example of ship graffiti will actually find it at Bassingham, some considerable distance away. And to this day I am still picking small fragments of wax crayon out of the lines of numerous inscriptions across East Anglia - blue and green appear to have been favourites.

Today of course we use digital technology to record the graffiti. The advent of reasonably cheap digital cameras has completely changed the manner in which we carry out surveys. Had Pritchard tried to record the graffiti in a church like Lidgate in Suffolk using photography then the processing costs alone would have bankrupted her. Boots the Chemist would have made a fortune. However, today we can happily wander into a church and take hundreds of high resolution digital images, at almost no cost, even if half of them are subsequently discarded. Put simply, if it wasn't for the advent of the digital camera then the large scale surveys currently taking place across the country simply wouldn't be possible.

And technology has also be the driving force behind the spread of those surveys. The rise of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter has allowed individuals to share their findings, to enthuse others, and come together to form new area or county surveys. Some are more formally organised, through groups such as the Wiltshire Field Group or MBA Archaeology. Others are simply groups of like minded individuals gathering together to share an interest. Indeed, these days barely a week goes by without a new group appearing somewhere or other - the 'Dunny-in-the-Wold Medieval Graffiti Appreciation Society', or the 'Society for the Recording of Really Old Graffiti in Churches, but can't come up with a Good Acronym' (SFTROGICBCCUWAGA). There are graffiti groups springing up in places I wasn't even aware still existed - Essex for example. There are multiple graffiti groups on social media platforms such as Facebook and Flickr. Some with thousands of members, freely sharing images. Others hidden away in dark corners, lest prying eyes try and steal their mason's marks. Recording early graffiti really has become 'a thing' for many thousands of people. All brought together by the power of social media. All made possible by recent advances in technology.

However, before we become too complacent, before we become just too comfortable with these new advances, there is one BIG thing to bear in mind. Technology is also our enemy. It is as much our enemy as an over enthusiastic churchwarden with a REALLY big tub of lime-wash and a manic gleam in their eyes.

Now I'm not talking here about some dystopian future in which legions of robots suddenly take it into their shiny metal heads to start visiting churches and recording the graffiti. The dystopian present seems quite bad enough without even contemplating that sort of thing. No, I am talking about the way in which the technology that we are currently using can, in the long run, fail us. In the first place it is worth remembering that technology advances at a frightening pace. So posting graffiti pictures to groups on Facebook or Twitter really isn't a long term recording strategy. Pretty interesting I'll grant you, but hardly long term archiving of the material. Now, for those of you under thirty, this may come as something as a shock, and you might want to sit down for a minute, but it IS fairly likely that platforms like Facebook won't be around forever. I know. Scary isn't it. No more kitten memes. No more cyber-stalking old classmates, just to see which one DID actually end up in prison. However, in the big scheme of things it is pretty likely. These things happen. Platforms come, and platforms go. Anyone remember Friends Reunited? When these platforms go, they go quickly, leaving barely a ripple. And with them will go all of your images - unless you have them properly archived elsewhere. So suddenly the technology that set us apart from Pritchard and her crayon rubbings, may actually leave us with far less to show for it.

And then there are the moments when the technology simply gets the better of us, despite our best intentions and best efforts. The moment when the technology demon really does leap out of the box, grab you by the dangly bits, and bring tears to the eyes. And I've seen quite a few instances of this lately. Entire church surveys undertaken by dedicated and enthusiastic volunteers, recording the graffiti on their tablets. Tablets that, because of their image settings, downsized every picture. Downsized every image to the extent that they were absolutely no use as a formal record of the inscriptions. Great for posting to Facebook obviously, but no use as an archive. Hours and hours of hard work, in often chilly conditions, all to no end.

So the technology that has allowed us to come so very far in such a short time may also, in the longer term, work against us. No shiny headed robots with built in LED spotlights. Just our own fallibility. So back up those photographs, print out those recording sheets, and do your bit to ensure that what has been recorded, stays recorded. If you don't I'm sending the shiny headed robots round... and you won't get the hover-boots.

Guest Blog 2: That Little Ship... by @jessikart

Welcome to the second of our Guest Blogs on the subject of "What history/heritage means to me". This week's beautiful contribution is from Norfolk based @jessikart. Jess has been very, very firm about what I am, and am not, allowed to write when describing her and her writing. For instance, I am, under no circumstances, allowed to mention the fact that her own blog has been viewed over 60,000 times. I'm certainly not allowed to tell you that she has guest blogged for Mumsnet, or that her blog appears regularly on the front page of their website. I'm also strictly forbidden from mentioning the fact that her blog pieces have been picked up by regional newspapers, or mention her now infamous blog post concerning Ed Balls...

So what am I allowed to say? Not a lot. I can say that Jess is a recent volunteer with the Norfolk Medieval Graffiti Survey, where she not only helps undertake surveys but also advises and helps on matters concerning publications, and that her own version of a biography read - "Jess is a history obsessed moo, a twatty blogger, and a right pain in the arse for some. She can be quite sweary. Has Scottish hair..."

That Little Ship... by @jessikart

Look at that. It’s not much, is it? But that ship, that tiny little etching changed my life. This is, from my point of view, in equal parts both terrifying and hilarious.

Almost exactly 25 years ago, I was on holiday in the north Norfolk village of Salthouse. I was bored, lonely, the weather was grotty, there was no possibility of taking a walk that day, so 10 year old me decided to explore St Nicholas church instead, standing high on a hill at the end of our lane. I mooched about inside aimlessly, half looking around at the memorials and windows, but finding nothing to dispel my ennui. I clambered into the choir stalls, trailing a pudgy hand behind me along the wood. And I felt something.

And that was it. A ship. More ships. A whole fleet of ships. And initials too, and dates, and all sorts of odd things. But why ships? I stood, and I stared, and my head swam slightly as the world rushed in at me, and I realised that I wasn’t the only one who had been here. I know that sounds stupid, but history had never occurred to me like that. History had never been about people.

History was dates, facts, books. Kings, queens, military campaigns. Not people like me. Not people who did anything other than die a long time ago. But the realisation that they too had their own futile hopes, silent dreams, and secret wishes.  And time… They had their own lifetime, just like me and everyone I knew. That thunderclap awakening still haunts me now, with the power to bring me to tears.*

     *Yes, fuck off; I did type that through tears and snot

 Because it did change my life. In the same way that staring up at the stars in the night sky is both a comfort and a chilling reminder of how utterly insignificant we are. It's a reminder that I wasn't here for a long time, I'm here now, but then I won't be. I’d love to say that since that moment, I have always considered history in this context. But that would be a big hairy arsed lie. Because that’s not how history is taught to young and enquiring minds. It’s almost as though some people don’t want to share history. They don’t want people to care about it in that sense. They want it to be dates, facts, books.

     History… is a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken

Not too hard, if I’m honest. A Level British Political History, last lesson on a Friday afternoon, hiding at the back of an overheated and stuffy Edwardian classroom. Listening to Mr John drone on, seemingly endlessly, about Corn Laws. With my cheek resting on the heel of my hand, my pen strokes becoming ever slower, elbow sliding further along the desk, chin dipping lower, blinks lasting longer…

     ‘And of course, who was one of the greatest advocates for repeal… Jess?

     Eyes slam open, head snaps back up, dribble wiped hastily from chin.

     ‘Erm… Cob…den…?

     ‘Correct. Now, the House of Commons had suggested the price per quarter, which as you know was 480lb, should be 80 shillings…’

The lowlevel background speech dragged on for a further 40 minutes until we had a ten minute break in the middle of the lesson. I’d huddle outside the Sixth Form common room, drinking a chemical coffee from the vending machine, smoking a fag. And sometimes I’d have a companion, and we’d chat and get wankily enthusiastic about 19^th Century art, music, architecture. About how the current events of then shaped and influenced life for everyone, and how this was reflected. We’d talk about patronage and protest, why Shelley  wrote ‘I met Murder on the way, he had a face like Castlereagh’, about the Tolpuddle martyrs, about what certain laws meant to people, real people, how it shaped their lives. And then the bell would ring, Mr John would sigh and say ‘You haven’t handed in that essay on Catholic Emancipation, don’t think I’d forgotten’ as he and I walked back into class, and I would resume my great fight against falling asleep in a lesson taught by a man who shared my passion for history.

You could sense the palpable frustration in him. That he wanted, desperately, to show his students that history wasn’t as he was teaching it. That this is the dry bit of the subject, but there is so much more. That the facts are inextricably intertwined with lives, with people, with meaning and feeling. Confined to a syllabus, however, he couldn’t convey that.  And when the school decided to crack down on the shocking practise of teachers joining sixth formers for a fag break, our chats stopped, and history became closed off to me. I half forgot Salthouse, and the whiplash memory was dulled. History became the very thing I didn’t want it to be. Dates, facts, books.  

And then just over a year ago… it was a dark and stormy night (no, really). I was titting about on twitter, probably making inappropriate remarks, and a blogpost got retweeted into my feed. And I read it. And just like the oncoming storm, Salthouse raced back in at me. Or rather, the ships sailed back into view, filling the horizon, their decks filled with the shadowy ghosts of all the people who had been there before me. Long before that bored and lonely girl happened upon them, they had been there too, just like me.  

It didn’t matter to me that I’ll never know their names, their ages, what lives of quiet desperation they lived. Who they loved and were loved by. That’s their story that no one else will ever know. What mattered to me is that something mattered to them. That they were compelled, at some point in time to leave their trace behind, to make their mark on history. Something was important to them, and for that reason, it’s important to me.

It’s not just the deliberate marks either. A worn down staircase in Gressenhall workhouse. A reminder of thousands of feet, an accumulation of steps wearing down the stone with no malice, no intent, just effect.

 A rippled, bent tin door of a Spanish church, the heat of the sun warping the original design, the metal thinned and smoothed by the many hands that have touched it, surrounded by ancient walls flecked with shelling and scorchmarks from the Civil War.

 The ruins at Baconsthorpe. How many other people have stood, where my two children stood, and taken in that same landscape, lost in thought, or perhaps talking, or arguing, or weeping? Maybe not even looking at it, as familiarity dulls the senses.

 This, all of it, every little detail, is what reminds me that just as I am both the hero and villain of my life story, so is and was every person who has ever drawn breath. Their lives mattered to them, they were just as important as we are, and equally just as insignificant. We’re born, we live, we die. But we leave fragments behind. Little clues as to who and what we were. That is what history means to me. People. And people continue to be a source of fascination to me – some might even say the source of fascination in my life. Endlessly wonderful, frustrating, beautiful, base human beings. I observe them; I think about them, I write about them. And from writing, some of the best things in my life* have happened, things without which, I don’t know where I would be or the type of life I would have.

     *Usual ‘birth of children’ disclaimer applies

So it really wasn’t much, was it, that little ship? Just a little ship, carved into the wood. But it changed my life then. And it changes my life now, every day. A ship that has taken me on a strange and unpredictable voyage, sometimes calm, sometimes stormtossed. That’s what history has done for me. That’s what history means to me. People. Always people.

Suffolk Churches: Sheep, fornication and Viking passion...

Silly Suffolk they call it – and who am I to contradict them? Obviously no idea who ‘them’ is, but I was brought up as a polite middle class boy and it was instilled in to me that it is rude to contradict anyone. Not really on. Not British. Not done. Indeed, had the German army actually made it over the channel in 1940, demanding allegiance to the thousand year Reich and insisting on coffee at breakfast, rumour has it that members of my family were ready to repel them with hard stares, bristling facial hair and mumbled expression of “not on, dear chap”. Where was I? Ah yes, silly Suffolk.

Well the Suffolk survey has begun. The border was crossed and no resistance was met. You’ve seen the website, admired the cheap graphics and, I hope, taken a good long hard look at the amazing graffiti. And it really is amazing. Suffolk has some amazing churches. Some really fantastic medieval monuments to money, power and sheep. Churches such as Long Melford and Lavenham, built with the profits from the wool trade, soar above the landscape. Delicate lace-like tracery mingled with the hard brutality of Barnack stone. The slabs of dark grey roof lead flattening the golden walls that vault towards the sky, carried by stone angels, anchoring them and squashing them back on to the earth. They are, in short, pretty darned good. Quite nice. Bit special.

However, for me the real gems of Suffolk – silly Suffolk – are not the great stone cathedrals of Long Melford, Bury and Lavenham. Indeed, despite their grandeur and history, they really leave me a little cold. They are too rich, too well maintained, too restored. They have a beauty, but it is a remote and detached beauty. It is impersonal, exquisite and largely barren of emotion. Whilst Simon Jenkins might get unnaturally excited viewing their soaring pinnacles and fornication (look it up), I find them dead and empty monuments. Like an empty display case in the British museum. The right thing, in the right place - but with nothing inside to engage the emotions or interest. Sorry Simon.

For me the real gems of Silly Suffolk are the small out of the way churches. Churches rarely visited by the coach parties and guidebook followers. They are the churches that have, despite plague, flood, famine, fire and the idiosyncrasies of Victorian clergy, survived virtually un-touched. They are the churches where medieval hands carved deep into medieval stone, leaving us a record of a past that never made it to the manuscript bestsellers of the day. Churches like Troston, where demons stalk the chancel arch, Parham, where a fleet of medieval ships continue in their centuries long voyage, and Weybread, where a medieval knight still battles an unseen dragon across the stonework.  They are the churches that never attract much attention, never make the front pages (unless the vicar has been particularly inventive), and have just remained. They have just remained as they are. Cared for by a few dozen local people, proud of their own little medieval gem, and continued to exist. And they are all out there waiting for us to rediscover them. Hundreds of secret time machines to the past.

And here’s the thing. Despite the fact that Suffolk and Norfolk are, as it were, joined at the hip (or the Waveney if you must), there is a difference in both the churches and the graffiti within them. It isn’t a massive difference. It isn’t even obvious. But there is a difference. Different patterns of distribution, different uses of symbols, different subject matter. Take windmills for example. Suffolk churches appear to have a good few graffiti windmills, whilst Norfolk has almost none. The same is true of astrological symbols. Suffolk appears to have a wealth of them, but few have been found in Norfolk churches. That said, if you want graffiti curses and the ‘evil eye’ come to Norfolk – the dark sibling…

As the surveys progress in both counties I am sure that these similarities and differences will become more apparent. We are the same – but different. Neither one better than the other, but with strange and intriguing local oddities. Rather says it all about East Anglia I feel. So is it really Silly Suffolk? Well I’ve never thought of it as so. When the Danes first landed here, intent on pillage and conquest (but with an option on rape should the opportunity present itself), they saw it as a blessed place. A place of lush greenery and wealth. A place that, in the end, they adopted as their own.  Where dynasties and families grew alongside each other, that resulted, eventually, in the building of our many hundreds of medieval churches. Those first Danish invaders, landing their longships on the golden sands of our East Anglian beaches, called it the Summer Country. It would be rude to contradict…

 

 

Whose history is it anyway?

Now let’s be clear here. The graffiti survey is a-political. It doesn’t support one political party or another. It doesn’t put forward a political view. It doesn’t say that this is right and that is wrong (excepting the odd occasion, but mainly with reference to cake). However, in recent months I have become increasingly aware that the material we are producing, the images we are putting into the public domain, are being closely followed by a growing number of individuals and organisations that appear to have an extreme right wing viewpoint.

I must admit that I have been surprised by this. Whilst many of the more extreme right-wing activists do tend to grab hold of any historical subject, clasp it to their bosom and push it forward as evidence of how great this country ‘used to be’, the idea that early graffiti would be of interest to them was a little surprising.

For starters it is graffiti. Although it has very little in common with modern graffiti it simply wasn’t something that I thought would ever enter the mainstream. It simply has too many negative connotations. For your right-wing activists graffiti is something that ‘yobs’ do down at the local bus shelter. It simply isn’t something you study as an aspect of medieval social history. Either that or they continue with the well worn (and wholly incorrect) idea that it was all created by bored choirboys (who were undoubtedly rather nice middle-class choirboys having a bit of fun). However, what really surprises me about their interest in, and use of, the subject matter is that, from my perspective, the one great potential of graffiti studies is that it sheds light upon the lives of the real ordinary people who lived and died in our English parishes many centuries ago. Not upon the landed classes (except at Troston), not upon the wealthy lords of the manor (except at Troston) and not upon the social elites (that’ll be Troston again) – but upon the lower orders – the commonality of the medieval parish.

For me archaeology and history is about far more than digging holes and searching through old documents. First and foremost it is about people. In the first instance the real appeal of studying early graffiti is the opportunity to gain an understanding of those individuals who lived and worked in the medieval parish - which is a real rarity. Individuals, particularly those from the lower orders, are rarely found in the documentary record as anything other than passing references. They certainly aren’t found in the churches. Indeed, if you walk in to just about any medieval church then just about everything you see – the alabaster monuments, memorial brasses and stained glass – all relate to the top 5% of society. The elite. Those who could afford to immortalise their memory in stone, brass and painted glass.

The amazing thing about the graffiti inscriptions we find and record is they have the potential to have been created by anyone and everyone. From the lord of the manor (Troston again) down to the lowliest commoner. Indeed, it would appear that many, many of the inscriptions we record were most probably created by the lower orders. At sites such as Blakeney, Cley and Wiveton it was the families who crewed the small fishing boats that ventured their lives in search of a meagre living who left us our stunning collection of medieval ship graffiti. At Wood Norton is was the retired and penniless priest who scratched his name into the porch he had spent a quarter of a century, most of his working life, gathering funds to build. At Litcham it was a family that scrapped an existence farming the common land and grazing sheep that left their names upon the aisle piers.

Many of these individuals lived hand to mouth, reliant upon the parish and the goodwill of their neighbours. They did no great deeds, fought no heroic battles, had no coats of arms and lived a fragile existence upon the very edges of society.  For many of them those brief graffiti scratchings in the parish church might be the ONLY physical mark they have left upon this world. Their only testament to existence. However, it was a society of which they were an integral part. Were they alive today then it would be those individuals queuing at a food bank, getting free school meals and help with their rent. Society, it appears, has moved on.

That I suppose is the real absurdity of all the right wing attention the project has been receiving of late. The graffiti we record often deals with real people’s hopes, passions and beliefs. It sheds light upon a lost lower order of the middle ages. It focuses attention upon a long dead commonality of the medieval parish. As many of the right wing activists have made quite clear, time and time and time again, these are the people who today they place NO value upon. Whom they dismiss as scroungers, layabouts and benefits cheats. Perhaps then they should consider taking a step back, and considering the long view, the next time they scoff at the idea of food banks for the needy… or perhaps, to them, the poorer classes are only interesting when they have been dead for a few centuries.

Hunting ship graffiti and meaning on the coast...

So, I’m hunting for ship graffiti again. You’d think I’d know better after all this time. Apparently not. Yesterday was another trip up to the coast, to track down a few examples in North Norfolk that I’d apparently missed. It happens. Back to Cley, Morston and Blakeney to get some better images of some of the very fragmented examples. The idea is that by looking at some of the less well known examples I might suddenly have an insight into some of the reasons behind the creation, behind the intended ‘function’, of some of the better known examples. As John Peake once wrote, the three big questions with all graffiti are the ‘why, when and by whom’ were they created? For me the biggest question has to be why?

In this respect I suppose the ship graffiti has at least a chance, in my opinion, of answering that question. It is so distinctive, so set apart from all the other types of graffiti, that surely here we have a candidate for a graffiti type that might yet yield its secrets. Ship graffiti shows certain distribution patterns within a building, it suggests association with areas of spiritual importance, and also has the added bonus of being at least vaguely dateable, that lead one to believe, perhaps, an answer might be tantalisingly close. Devotional. It’s a word I use a lot in relation to many graffiti inscriptions. I certainly ascribe devotional aspects to many of the ship graffiti I come across. I guess it is my own shorthand for suggesting that these images had meaning, had intended function, for those who created them. That they were important to them at a fundamentally spiritual level. Perhaps I should replace the concept of devotional with spiritually important?

Therein lies the problem with much of the stuff we look at. Graffiti studies on the level we are looking at it is really like sailing the ocean without a map. Unlike just about every other area of medieval church studies we look at, be it stained glass, alabaster monuments or memorial brasses, the area of graffiti has no real established bibliography. No way markers. We have no research framework in which to work. We are groping blind through a whole new corpus of material and, each day, making new discoveries that turn what we thought we did know upon its head. Each day we are simply working upon the evidence before us but, like the sea and the sand, it’s a constantly shifting mindscape of ideas, perception and imagination.

So, back to the ships….

In Blakeney church we have identified distribution patterns that suggest that the ship graffiti was clustered around a side altar, most probably dedicated to St Nicholas – he that would help those in peril upon the sea. My thoughts were, and are, that these are ‘devotional’ images. That they are prayers made solid in stone. Exactly what that prayer was, hope or despair, we will never know, but they were prayers nonetheless. Am I right in this assumption? Only time will tell. The identification of similar distribution patterns at other sites certainly seems to support the argument. What is clear is that these images, these scratchings on a church wall, were important to someone. They were important to those who made them, and those who came after and respected them. They had meaning and function. They meant something.

But that is only half the story. The ship graffiti that we find so neatly laid out at Blakeney is found elsewhere. We find C17th ships on the screen at Salthouse, C18th graffiti ship adorning the doors at Morston and C19th ships scratched on the walls of North Repps church. Are they too all devotional imagery created in the same vein as the images at Blakeney? I rather doubt it. I doubt that they were created with the same intention – that they had a different meaning and function. The function had evolved. It had changed. But the question I suppose is how had it evolved? What did it now mean? So now we must develop new theories. Theories about continuity of belief and evolution of folk beliefs – areas with as few documentary references as graffiti studies themselves.

This, I presume to preach, is the problem with all archaeology. We interpret action as function and ascribe it a meaning. We add our interpretations to an individual interaction – and try to create an order from chaos. We hope to understand the unknowable. Whoever created the ship graffiti in Blakeney church did so because it meant something personal to them, on a spiritual level. Perhaps it was them asking for a safe voyage yet to come; perhaps it was an act of thanksgiving? Perhaps it was a memorial to friends and loved ones taken by the sea? An act for the long dead and possible futures that never happened. Sadly their intentions were never formally recorded, leaving us to speculate upon a meaning and function based simply upon the scratches on the wall. We develop theory from someone’s possible tragedy.

And so I went to Cley beach, watched the waves roll across the shingle, felt the spray misting my hair with salt, and heard the roar of the north wind – and pondered those myriad lost futures.

 

 

Medieval graffiti: changing our perceptions

One of the fundamental problems with searching for early graffiti inscriptions is that they are actually pretty difficult to see. Actually, many of them are really, really difficult to see. A lightly scratched line in pale stonework can, in normal lighting conditions, be almost invisible. It is only by shining a light across the surface at a very oblique angle, known as a raking light survey, that these lines and inscriptions suddenly become visible, with the shadows casting them into vivid contrast. It is the fact that these inscriptions have been all but invisible for the last few centuries that has led to them being largely overlooked as a medieval resource. However, this invisibility may well have also been responsible for their survival. What was invisible to the church ‘restorers’ of the 19^th century tended to escape their loving attention.

In some respects this has led to a general misconception concerning these early graffiti inscriptions. Because they are difficult to make out today many people assume that this was the case when they were first made. They then, applying the twisted logic of misconception to the case, assumed that they were always ‘meant’ to be hidden away, to be something located in dark corners of the church, and that they were, like modern graffiti, seen as unacceptable or anti-social. Acts of vandalism. However, this just doesn’t appear to be the case.

The one thing you have to remember about English churches in the later Middle Ages, most particularly those in East Anglia, is that they would have mostly looked very, very different from the way they look today. The bleak and lime-washed walls that we see today would originally have been a riot of colour, with wall paintings and pigment covering just about every surface. High on the church walls would have been the images of the saints, the elegant depictions of parables and protection giving St Christopher. Above the chancel arch would have been the Doom painting, with one side showing the souls of the saved being lifted to heaven and the other showing the souls of the damned cast down into hell (always a good few tonsured heads or Bishop’s mitres amongst them). However, we also know that even the lower walls of the church, and the piers, would often be painted as well.

These lower areas of the walls weren’t really suitable for elaborate images. The damp rising up and down the stonework, as wet season changed to dry, would have made the images friable and fragile – prone to be rubbed off by any passing sleeve or doublet. Instead they were often painted with a plain pigment. Just a single colour. At places like Weston Longville the analysis of the lower parts of the nave walls reveals that they were repainted on numerous occasions – red ochres, blacks, yellow ochres – layer upon layer. The graffiti inscriptions in the church were often within these lower areas of the walls, below the formal paint schemes, and were actually incised through these layers of pigment to reveal the pale stone beneath. As a result the graffiti inscriptions, far from being hidden away in dark corners of the church, would have been one of the most obvious things you noticed upon entering the building.

This of course has a number of quite far reaching implications for how we think about the graffiti inscriptions. The ship graffiti at St Nicholas, Blakeney, is a perfect example. Here we have a pillar literally covered in graffiti, opposite a side altar, and close inspection of the pier base shows that it was once painted a deep red colour. The ship graffiti was created over a two hundred year period, at least, and each respects the space of those around it. It must, therefore, be assumed that the earlier inscriptions were visible to those who create the later inscriptions. This suggests that these little ship inscriptions, etched through the red pigment, were clearly on show for at least two centuries. During that time they weren’t defaced, they weren’t covered over – they were in fact respected by those who came after them. The parish priest, should he have so wished, could have had them covered over, painted out, erased – but it would appear that he didn’t. The implication is, that on at least a local level, these inscriptions of ship graffiti were both accepted and acceptable. The same is likely to have been true of many of the other graffiti inscriptions. They may not have been part of the orthodox teachings of the Church, but they were most certainly an accepted part of local belief and religious practice. The only dark corners they inhabited were those of the parishioner’s souls.

Ship Graffiti: For those in peril upon the sea…

Although I come across all types of church graffiti, from the ancient to the modern, and the unique to the mundane, I have to admit that I still have a really big soft spot for ship graffiti. Demons, curses and monsters are all very interesting (and add a cool, hip and trendy Buffy-the-Vampire-Slayer like dimension to the whole graffiti hunting thing – which in all other respects is just staring at a church wall – but what the heck!) but there is something more intriguing, more real, about ship graffiti. Ever since I first came across examples of ships carved into the walls of a medieval church I have been fascinated with them.

I suppose to some extent it is because I grew up around ships and shipping. Norfolk is surrounded on three sides by water and the sea is an inescapable reality. If you don’t love the sea then, quite frankly, you are in the wrong county. Move to Leicestershire. Norfolk is a county that produced Admiral Lord Nelson (who apparently hated the place) and Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell (who sank half the British Mediterranean fleet by sailing it into the Scilly Isles – but we don’t talk about him) and it’s difficult to live within a few miles of the coast without finding yourself drawn to stare at the thin blue horizon.

Anyone who has ever spent any time dealing with seagoing ships will understand it when I say that ships have personalities. They have names, certainly, but each vessel also has a unique quality that sets them aside from every other seagoing craft – even those built by the same hands in the same boat-yard. They are all individuals. And the same is true of the ship graffiti.

The first time I came across ship graffiti was with John Peake up at the churches of the Glaven ports – Blakeney, Wiveton, Cley and Salthouse – in north Norfolk. Hundreds of little ships carved into the screens, piers and stonework of the churches. Each one different. Each one unique. Some were crude and simple outlines etched in the stone, whilst others showed masses of detail – rigging, anchors, banners, flags and planking. Each one a vessel of the port etched into the parish church. To the medieval inhabitants of those villages many of these would have been distinct and recognisable ships, identifiable by a name that we no longer know. Belonging to people they shared their lives with, crewed by friends, family and neighbours.

What struck me then, as it still does today, is a complete lack of understanding as to why these images had been created. The general idea, that they are found in coastal churches, appears no longer to be the case. The graffiti surveys currently being undertaken across England have found almost as many examples inland as they have by the coast, with examples now coming to light as far away from the sea as it is possible to get in central Leicestershire. Only a couple of weeks ago a very unusual painted and incised example, probably dating from the sixteenth century, was discovered at a church in Hertfordshire. Also noteworthy is the fact that all the examples I have come across, either on the coast or far inland, appear to show seagoing vessels. Not river craft, but fully equipped seagoing ships.

Why then are we finding images of sailing ships all over our English parish churches? Are they simply local people doodling images on the walls of the everyday items they see, or is there a deeper function and meaning to them? Well, at a couple of sites that I have looked at there are a few tantalising clues that these images of ships may have had a far more devotional and spiritual aspect than we give them credit for.

Blakeney church on the north Norfolk coast is packed full of early graffiti inscriptions, which include dozens of examples of ships. However, although the early graffiti is to be found all over the church the ship graffiti is all heavily concentrated in one area, the easternmost pier of the south arcade. This pillar is literally covered with little images of ships, each respecting the space of those around them and not crossing over each other. According to maritime historians the ships depicted were created over a period of at least two centuries. Intriguingly, the pier in question sits facing the south aisle altar and is exactly opposite a now empty image niche.

Even more intriguing is the fact that this very same distribution pattern appears elsewhere. Whilst surveying Blackfriars Barn undercroft in Winchelsea for the National Trust (also full of ship graffiti) I took the opportunity one lunchtime to go and look at the remains of St Thomas’ church in the main square. Here again I discovered early graffiti all over the church, and a good number of ships. However, as with Blakeney, all the ships were focussed upon one area in the church – the side altar and associated chapel. According to the church records that chapel was dedicated to St Nicholas, the very same dedication as the church at Blakeney. For those of you who don’t know St Nicholas, as well as being associated with children, had a distinct maritime association and, for many centuries, was looked upon as the patron saint of ‘those in peril upon the seas’.

So what are we really seeing here? It would appear to me that these images of ships are far more than idle doodling. Their distribution patterns and their apparent association with a maritime saint would suggest to me that these inscriptions are actually devotional in nature. That they are literally prayers made solid in stone. It doesn’t account for all the examples I come across, but it certainly appears to hold good for many of those found by the coast. The last question I suppose must be what type of prayer are they? Are they thanksgiving for a voyage safely undertaken, or a prayer for safe passage on a journey yet to come? As several people have pointed out, some of these ship images appear to show deliberate damage, begging the question as to whether they are prayers for long overdue ships? Vessels that never quite made it back to port, family and friends. The answer to that question, I guess, we will probably never know.