This is the seventh snippet from my work looking at graffiti in the church.Most of the graffiti in my previous articles was hidden away up the tower but this one is on the pillar nearest the servery in the nave – you have probably walked past it without noticing it.
Shallow scratches tend not to show up on a well illuminated surface because they are the same colour as the rest of the stonework. The best way to see them is with a strong light just grazing the surface, which creates shadows in the scratches.
Most of the graffiti in previous articles is on fairly smooth surfaces but this one is on a rather rough surface and grazing light also exaggerates the roughness.
I feared that it might have been plastered over to to give a smoother surface during the SpaceForAll restoration, but I assume someone saw the graffiti so it was just repainted rather than being resurfaced.
The main shape looks like a tower with a pointed roof and what could be a flag on top. It would be tempting to assume it was the church tower, but as far as we know our tower never had a pointed roof.
I’ve marked several other lines that might be part of the drawing but they don’t have obvious interpretations. And if bits of the stone surface flaked off after the lines were drawn then parts of them would have been lost.
John Harrison (xxx 2026)
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