How to “do” a church with effigies!
See Good, M (2004) The Buildings of England Database, Oxford: Oxford University
Press
 Print outs of churches (two lists for each county spanning two eras) available from Jane (jane@jmdandco.com).
 Prioritise effigies dated 1485 to 1603 - go back to 1480 and up to 1610 if
they look interesting. (If there are 17th century effigies in the same church
as a 16th century effigy, record them too; if they are en route, record them
if time allows).
Preparatory investigations required are:
1) Practical issues
Specific address for the church (with postcode, if possible)
Times for regular services
Is the church usually open? What times? Is there car parking available?
Vicar/rector, churchwardens or keyholder contact information
Consult the following:
www.achurchnearyou.com
The church’s own website (if there is one).
 Try Google and Yahoo! with saint’s name, “church” and place name. if it
yields historical information (see below), record the web address and
check details in another source.
Record all the above, as follows (see pro forma below):
Church saint dedication, street, town/village, county, postcode
Contacts
Opening times
Services
Car parking arrangements
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2) Historical information
If there are two or more monuments, record the relevant information under
separate headings (monument1, monument2).
www.british-history.ac.uk
 Register as a user
 Enter parish town/village in search on home page).
For referencing, scroll to top of relevant page and copy full source
information, for example:
'Parishes: Compton', A History of the County of Surrey: Volume 3 (1911), pp. 1624. URL: http://www.britishhistory.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=42923&strquery=compton surrey. Date
accessed: 02 December 2007.
Edit, as follows (editor’s name is above the citation on the web page):
Malden, H (1911) A History of the County of Surrey: Volume 3 at URL:
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=42923&strquery=compton
surrey. Date accessed: 02 December 2007.
Pages numbers are cited in text (see below).
www.imagesofengland.org.uk
 Register as a user
 Go to advanced search:
www.imagesofengland.org.uk/AdvancedSearch/default.aspx?pid=2
Enter “place name” or “postal town” as appropriate
Enter “building type” as church
www.pevsner.co.uk/index.html
 Check for most recent edition of Pevsner’s Building of England series for
the relevant county.
 Add full bibliographical reference to “From:” section in pro forma (see
below).
 Look up description of each monument; record page number.
Are there effigies/figures? If so, how many?
Are the men dressed in armour? If so, are there other figures?
General or specific church websites
 Search for general websites with Google and Yahoo! with keywords such
as “county” churches (for example, “Kent churches”).
 For church’s own website see above.
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www.churchcrawler.co.uk
 Worth a look (sometimes useful for history, keyholder, accessibility,
parking information etc).
Llewellyn, 2000 - index
 Llewellyn, N (2000) Funeral monuments in post-Reformation England,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
 Check county in index (places are listed under county name)
 Read any relevant text, record page numbers and footnote numbers etc.
Other texts
 Try local library catalogue with keywords "county" plus "effigy/effigies",
"monument", etc …
 www.amazon.co.uk with keywords as above
 www.abebooks.co.uk and other on-line book shops
Record text from the various sources above in descriptive paragraphs
referenced Harvard style: (Author, year, page number) bracketed in text and
author, initial (year) title, place: publisher in bibliography.
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3) Visiting the churches and photographing the effigies
When visiting the churches, tell someone where/when you are going (if travelling
alone), take a fully charged mobile phone, a stepladder, a feather duster (for
gentle surface cleaning only), a torch (with working batteries), your camera and
other photographic equipment.
Use a large scale road map of the area, a street atlas (A to Z or similar) and a
satellite navigation system, if available.
Never take risks with your personal safety! Churches can be remote, dark and
hazardous. If you feel uneasy at any time, pack up and leave.
Look for the electric light switches as soon as you arrive. Please don’t forget to
turn them off when you leave. Remember - balancing on a rickety chair for that
little detail high up at the back of the monument is not worth a broken leg!
Check for a church guide book (give a donation if you take one), information
leaflets or interpretive notes on the monument. Record all the relevant
information – dates, names etc.
Take your photographs and download them from the camera as soon as
possible. File them in named folders which record who each effigy represents on
which monument with date. It is easy to forget these details if you leave this too
long.
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4) Photography (with and without flash using tripod, if possible)
Monument:
Complete monument
Whole family (all figures)
All men
All women
All figures in civilian dress:
Full length (front, side, behind)
Top half (front, side, behind)
Bottom half (front, side, behind) NB aim for overlap top/bottom
Torso (front, side, behind)
Neckline (décolletage and throat separately if necessary)
Sleeve/s (front, side, behind, relevant details)
Cuff/s
Head (front, side, behind, top)
Shoes (side, soles)
Accessories/jewellery (for example, girdle, book, rings)
Extra details (for example, shoulder rolls, neckline, hem decoration)
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5) Recording the information
Pro forma for church effigy recording
Copy the following into a Word document (named for the village/town where the
church is located) and record all the information gathered under the appropriate
headings Practical information:
Saint’s Church, Address, Town/village, county, postcode
Contact information
Services
Historical information:
Historical text and descriptive information in paragraphs
Bibliography:
??Church guide book/leaflet (author/anon, year, title, place: publisher)
British History online, Institute of Historical Research
www.british-history.ac.uk
Good, M (2004) The Buildings of England Database, Oxford: Oxford University
Press
Llewellyn, N (2000) Funeral monuments in post-Reformation England,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
National Monuments Record (English Heritage), Images of England,
www.imagesofengland.org.uk
Pevsner (year), The buildings of England: county??,
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6) Preparing the images for the database
If you have Photoshop available, it is very helpful to format the images, as
follows What you need on your computer:
A folder called Original Pix
A folder called Copies
A folder called Main images (with a folder called Uploaded inside)
A folder called Thumbnails (with a folder called Uploaded inside)
We need to upload the images to the database in two sizes other than the
original size. These sizes are 500 pixels wide and 160p pixels wide. So this is
the procedure Formatting pictures for the tudoreffigies.co.uk database:
Rename the original images as safe filenames:
Use underscores "_" instead of spaces or avoid spaces altogether.
Remove all non alphanumeric characters such as & or ' or " etc.
Make a duplicate of the original picture and file the original in the folder called
Original pix and the duplicate in the Copies folder.
Open the duplicate in Photoshop, then, using the menus at the top, select
the following –
Go to the image menu -> Adjustments -> Autolevels
To Rotate the image (if necessary), go to
image -> rotate canvas -> 90 deg CW or CCW
To resize the image to 500px, go to
image -> image size
Specify Width: 500 (and make sure pixels is selected not percent) and
click ok
To save the image, go to
file -> save for web
in the settings section at the top right select jpeg, and use quality at 51%.
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Click ok and a file dialogue box will appear.
Save the image in the Main images folder. Replace “copy” in the filename with
“500”. This makes the image easier to locate later.
To resize the image to 160px, go to
image -> image size
Specify Width: 160 (and make sure pixels is selected not percent) and
click ok
Then to save the image, go to
file -> save for web
in the settings section at the top right select jpeg, and use quality at 51%.
Click ok and a file dialogue box will appear.
Save the image in the Thumbnails folder. Replace “copy” in the filename with
“160”. This makes the image easier to locate later.
When both resizings are done, close all the image windows but DON'T save
them as this will replace the copies, which are the backups.
7) Uploading the images to the tudoreffigies.co.uk database online
If you are ready to upload your effigy images, either contact Jane to request
permission to access the database management system or send a memory
stick with all the formatted photographs and the Word document with the
relevant information to Jane and she will arrange to upload everything. If you
would like to be credited as the photographer, please add this to the information
at the bottom of the bibliography section.
8) Access and use of images
The photographs are made available online for research purposes. Anyone who
wishes to publish an image from the database must credit
www.tudoreffigies.co.uk. There is no charge. However, permission must be
requested from jane@jmdandco.com and may (in some unlikely circumstances)
be refused. Photographers donate their photographs to the database on the
understanding that they may be reproduced elsewhere.
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