Surveying the graffiti of Lincoln Cathedral

Just before Christmas the BBC News website reported on an ongoing project at Lincoln Cathedral to find and record the medieval and later graffiti in the building. These date from the fourteenth century onwards and are both sacred and secular in their intention. More than eight thousand have been identified and the survey is by no means complete.

The report can be seen at Extent of  Lincoln Cathedral graffiti revealed

This online visit to Lincoln leads rather neatly into my next post. When some of these graffiti were made Lincoln Cathedral was, whether people who saw it knew or not, the tallest building hitherto built in the world. From 1311 until a storm blew it down in 1548 the central tower - itself the tallest in the country - supported a timber and lead spire which overtopped all others. Often claimed to have been 584 feet high, but almost certainly somewhat less because of physical limitations, maybe 560 feet, it was not exceeded in height until the completion of the Washington monument in Washington DC in 1884, the same decade in which it was rivalled by the completion of Cologne Cathedral and Ulm Minster. Now it has a new rival …