Your Church: A Threshold to History

What can looking at an ordinary parish church - this example is in rural North Yorkshire, England - tell us about its history? Four specialists talk about their approach to the evidence; the video is designed to be viewed in sections. Firstly, the churchyard: the tombstones are vital evidence. Their inscriptions must be recorded now, before weathering destroys them. Then the fabric of the church: much can be learned from careful observation, making measurements and drawings and taking photographs. The viewer is introduced to ground-based remote sensing techniques, which involve electronic scanning and computer enhancement of images; and tree-ring dating techniques are employed to help date a sequence of bell frames in the tower. The third section explores the archaeological evidence of another church that was demolished to make way for a supermarket. The development of the building is traced from the earliest wooden structure through to the greatly enlarged Victorian church. The last section shows the church as part of the wider landscape in which it was built. Traces of earlier agricultural communities who worshiped there can still be seen in the form of roads, tracks, boundary banks, medieval field cultivation strips, and later park land.

This program is particularly suitable for teacher training.

Part of the series Frameworks of Worship