Historic Graffiti on the Tower of St Oswald's Church, Filey, North Yorkshire

During a visit to the roof of the tower of St Oswald's Church in Filey it was noted that extensive, well preserved graffiti covers the lead roof. A rapid consultation with a number of colleagues concluded that the quantity and diversity of these remains appeared to be quite rare and of a particularly early date for survival on a lead roof. At this point it was suggested that the graffiti on the tower roof at St Oswald's could be used to as the test study to develop guidance notes for a methodology for recording graffiti. In conjunction with the production of the guidelines a study of the graffiti would also be made in order to try to place some form of historic interpretation on them. This report and collection represents the results of that study. The collection comprises the project design and project report, a catalogue listing the inscribed graffiti by panel, several very large orthophoto files, and the photography used to create these via a structure-from-motion model of the church roof. The project compared the traditional 2D rectified photography with the 3D Structure-from-Motion approach. This allowed a direct comparison of the two methods to evaluate the cost, speed and accuracy of results. It was also proposed to undertake an additional comparative assessment of part of the graffiti using digital images from a smart phone, a compact digital camera and a 'professional' high resolution digital SLR