Keep on ticking by!

Field Work Diary Day 5

Rounding off the pre-excavation work was a field trip to a cemetery to do some graveyard survey work. This involves taking down all the details of a grave and marking it off on a map. And I mean all the details ranging from the obvious like the occupant and time of internment to the type and material of the grave as well as the typeface of the inscription. It was an interesting and varied day if not a little sobering at times due to the subject matter.

One grave that stood out to me particularly was a family tomb as the dates really told a story. One son dies in the Somme in World War One. His brother is then killed in India during active duty in World War Two. The father of the family dies about 6 days later at home, seemingly from grief. 8 years later the daughter of the family dies, presumably unmarried and childless before finally the mother of the family dies less than 5 years after that.

Other than that it was a good day and it was also nice to see photography used as a backup to our records, especially as my sketches were a bit poor! !