Last night through the media of ZOOM we welcomed Dr Matt Godfrey with a talk entitled What Did Lincolnshire’s Medieval Churches Really Look Like?

Matt works for the Lincoln Diocese, where he is the Historic Churches Support Officer. He has been a great ally of the Sutterby Spirits over many years and has lectured for us several times in the past – Matt is a mine of knowledge on the history of Lincolnshire churches.

He has been looking at medieval churches to see if he can determine if they were rendered with lime mortar or not, and whether it was to help protect the soft green limestone from the weather or to make them stand out in the landscape, not an easy job. There are not many medieval churches that have not been “modified”, totally rebuilt or fallen down. He found the drawings by J.C. Nattes that were made at the request of Sir Joseph Banks in the late 1700’s early 1800’s and are now kept in the Lincolnshire Archives a great help as they show the churches as they were in those days. Matt could then see the before and after, also the drawings quite often show remnants of render in places. He rounded off the talk with a picture of what Sutterby Church may have looked like if it was fully rendered.

Many thanks for the interesting and informative talk Matt and we look forward to many more.