Writings on the wall - Brum, 2022

There are plenty of surprises and random circumstances in life that always give us a chance to experience new things and discover new places. A couple of weekends ago I had to visit Birmingham. Even though I had lived in nearby Coventry, never been motivated enough to hop on a bus to its bigger neighbour.

This time, however, the fact that I had been being given a ticket for a concert by a singer I have loved for over two decades was quite a motivation, indeed. Therefore, despite the current distance, without hesitation, I rushed to the "Venice of West Midlands"(I just made it myself, not sure if anyone calls it this way. The fun fact is that Birmingham has a longer canal line length than Venice itself).

This post is not about the city, though, not even so much about a particular site, but about tiny little traces of the past that make your chest fill with joy. And how to record them.

The church of St. Paul's stands in the middle of a lovely square of the same name and once was a landmark of the surrounding famous Jewellery Quarter. It was a wonderful sunny morning and thanks to that I was able to spot the writing and initials carved on the church's north-eastern wall. And just to spot them but to see them in their full glory.

We all know that such behaviour is proper vandalism and is blameworthy, no doubt. At the same time, it is difficult to look at these marks, imagine someone standing over 200 years ago in the same place as you are now, and get rid of this cheeky thought saying 'how cool is that..?' Well, I couldn't.

Cautious observation of an old building instantly moves us to another world, another space and allows it to tell us its story. Story of the changes, reconstruction, different purposes, of their damages and repairs.

Even if this story is not always clear to us, it always needs to be carefully recorded to give a basis for future studies. We can only hope that before this drainpipe was installed, the stone behind it had been examined and recorded properly. So we would know exactly which year of the 1790s the mysterious W.K. visited this site and meticulously scrubbed his initials on the church wall.

The story can be also quite confusing. Like in the case of the carving shown in the photograph below:

The Church of St. Paul's was built in the years 1777-1779. Was the date of 1622 then a later joke with a very good imitation of the 17th-century writing? Or was the stone reused from another building, signed by W.E on the 17th of April, over a century before?

The number of details I was able to spot while amateurishly examining the church in the morning sun, led me to another conclusion about historic building recording. Which is how much depends on the lighting and that in certain circumstances one visit maybe not be enough.

This photograph above from the other, south-western side of the church, also shows letters carved in the stone. They are much less clear to see, and some might be easily missed. I am deeply convinced that it is worth waiting a little longer for the sun to move, to be able to present them as they truly deserve. And allow the future scholars to be as happily stunned as I was that morning.