On Tuesday (20 May 2025) Brian Porter, who is the Lead Surveyor of the Lincolnshire Medieval Graffiti Survey gave us a lecture entitled: Graffiti in Lincolnshire Churches

Not all of you will know that Sutterby has its very own Church Graffiti Group who visit churches in the south Lincolnshire Wolds to seek out and record graffiti from medieval to modern. They are part of the wider national project to record church graffiti that is led in Lincolnshire by Brian Porter. – Brian has been involved with the work to record the many thousands of graffiti found (thus far) in the Cathedral, a project which is still ongoing, and he oversees several small teams of volunteer graffiti hunters and recorders around the county such as our own small group drawn from the Spirit of Sutterby – more volunteers are always needed!

Often these churches are at risk of closure (or worse), so the work to record the designs and scribing made by people, perhaps hundreds of years ago, is an essential task.

In his lecture, Brian gave us an insight into how the work in Lincolnshire has progressed so far and also what we can do with this unusual historical data once it has been collected.

Here are a small sample of the screenshots of the talk.