WRITING ON THE WALL

Two or three decades have gone by since I called in at Salthouse church, on Norfolk's north coast, to take a look at the maritime graffiti incised on the stonework and - I seem to remember - on the backs of some of the pews. Ships, mainly, if memory serves me; and moreover, the sort of ships a choirboy of the time might have seen had he stood on the hill beside the church and gazed out to the sea. 
Puzzles remained, though. Why were the drawings done? The naughty choirboy thing doesn't really stand up because there were so many of them, and they must have been visually apparent to everyone. Also, some of them would have taken a long time to do. So, were they 'good luck' symbols, a local way of blessing a ship and its crew, perhaps prior to a voyage? And the biggest question of all: how old were they?
The good news is that the Norfolk Medieval Graffiti Survey has been busy carrying out research which will ultimately involve examining every Medieval church in the county. And they have already found plenty, with examples being spread around over 30 different church of the 50 or so investigated so far, including not only Salthouse but also Blakeney, Cley, Wiveton, Colkirk, Binham Priory, Litcham and King's Lynn.
And not always scratched ships, either, but crosses, words, names, patterns and symbols, even the crudely carved outline of a hand and a grotescue head.
Nor were these drawings necessarily made by naughty children or other miscreants, for the survey has also shown that the surviving images could have been cut by a commoner, priest or nobleman, man, woman or child. They evidently crossed the boundaries of class, and there seems little doubt that, taken as a whole, they reflect the hopes, fears and humour of Medieval parish inhabitants.
Some of the most interesting are to be found in the four churches of Blakeney, Wiveton, Cley and Salthouse, presenting the four parishes that surrounded the mouth of the river Glaven and the big, bustling port that developed there during the Middle Ages, which handled not only herring and cod, but also pilgrims heading for and away from Walsingham.
Indeed, these four churches display vast quantities of graffiti from the Medieval and post-Medieval periods, including merchants' marks, illuminated capitals, prayers and symbols. At Blakeney, for example, more than 30 ships' images have been found.
The subject goes further than this, however, for another major surprise was uncovered at Binham Priory, where blueprints for the master mason's design for a West Front had been carefully and accurately etched into the walls.
And here's another thing. By 2014 the survey had expanded its field of research to take in inscriptions and drawings from churches in Suffolk, for the two counties, between them, have over 1,100 Medieval churches, many of them of similar architectural style. What the survey has already shown is that there are county differences in graffiti subject matter and distribution. Indeed, it seems that windmills and astrological symbols are common Suffolk, while Norfolk has more curses.
I'm still trying to work that one out.
(Current Archaeology, issue 256, July 2011; and issue 291, June 2014)