Background

This project is an attempt to display an archaeological survey of the graffiti present on the east face of the reredos at Beverley Minster. The survey recorded the graffiti and digitised it using appropriate technologies in order to make it available to interested parties over the World Wide Web. It is hoped the finished website will form a point of interest for those casually interested in the church, as well as serving as a useful resource for those researching graffiti, ‘unseen history’ or Beverley Minster in a more academic capacity.

This website is intentionally sparse as it could be integrated with the main Beverley Minster website at some point in the future which already has pages contextualing the minster and features many multimedia elements.

Shields: These are infrequently found in the graffiti record. One shield is on the left bay, main wall, and there is a less clear cut example at the same height on the left return.
Swords: To be found exclusively on the left return in a cluster. Most are half finished.
Crosses: Very widely distributed across the record. Interestingly, 90% occur as a band across the middle of the bays, but on the right bay a cluster occurs at an unusually high height.
Signatures: There is a wealth of signatures across the wall. More than any other type of marking, signatures appears across the whole span of the wall’s history. They are evenly distributed in a manner similar to crosses, but are more abundant. Signatures are significantly more common on the main bays as opposed to the returns. Signatures are a useful reference for dating. The name signature may be a misnomer, because rather than being the ‘signature’ of the graffitist, the names may well be devotions to saints.
Initials: Initials are similarly distributed and numerous to signatures. Occasionally these are surrounded by a square box, sometimes ‘decorated’ with dots.
Ships/boats: Pritchard refers to these at boats, yet the vessels in the Beverley graffiti record resemble ocean-going ships in size and ships than they do boats.
Writing pads: The name writing pad may be a misnomer as curiously the pads are seldom written on, but the name best describes the appearance of these scored horizontal lines which are sparsely distributed across the reredos, but with at least one ‘pad’ appearing on each bay.
Miscellaneous shapes and symbols: A catch-all remaining category encompassing seemingly random geometric shapes, arrangements of dots to deftly crafted patterns.

And finally, in case it is not clear from the architectural conventions used in the model of the bay, there are two returns which in reality project from the east face of the reredos but have been laid flat for the purposes of dissemination on the world wide web.