CONTEXT 175 : MARCH 2023 37 EAST ANGLIA COAST Cathedral, and we were both keen to offer our time and experience. Such schemes can provide skills training and routes to employment, and can thus attract external funding. But before launching into such an ambitious scheme, we decided to begin work, in a low-key way, on the ledger slabs. We set up an initial training week in partnership with the NHCT and the Matthew Project. Deborah taught a team of us how to gently clean out inscriptions, remove years of dirt and grease from the slabs, and apply polish which can be regularly buffed up. Within three days we saw amazing improvements in the ledgers and committed to continuing the work. Our ledger stones are largely black ‘marble’ (a polished limestone from the low countries, brought to Norwich in ships returning from exporting finished woollen goods). Ledger slabs which cover burials in the church superseded brass memorials, and date from the early 17th century to the early 19th century, when burials within churches became illegal. We encouraged our volunteers to learn more by watching a lecture given by Julian Litten for the Churches Conservation Trust (www.youtube. com/watch?v=tkG2NV9tNUY, the talk starts about 17 minutes in.) There are three stages in the cleaning process, which begins with picking out the dirt from lettering and associated designs using toothbrushes and wooder skewers. This first stage can take several sessions but it is a rewarding task. Next, we sweep or vacuum before applying Nitromors over the slab. This is left for a minimum of 20 minutes before being washed off with water and cotton wool, and left to dry. The next stage is to apply Johnson’s Traffic Wax, which takes an hour or so to dry, after which it is polished up using paper. Our volunteer team meets fortnightly for a couple of hours, and we provide skills training for young and old. After 15 months we have cleaned and polished about three quarters of the slabs in the church and we are looking ahead to a more challenging project: the wall monuments. The PCC has obtained a faculty to clean and conserve the wall monuments, using a volunteer team to be led by Deborah. She would be on site throughout to teach and supervise the cleaning, and carry out some refixing and repairs to damaged sculpture. We will need a few dedicated volunteers who can commit to one and two weeks’ continuous work, and who will be comfortable on scaffolds. We would like to build on volunteer work carried out on the NHCT’s churches, and thus establish St George Colegate as a centre for training in conservation skills. The needs and opportunities in our city’s surviving 31 medieval churches must surely demand it. Jane Kennedy was a partner at Purcell, and worked on the conservation of churches, cathedrals and country houses. One of the uncleaned ledgers Far left: Cleaning ledgers One of the ledgers after being cleaned and polished
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