About a hundred years ago three right little vandals went to Castle Rising, and left their marks on the ancient stones of the room below the great hall.
Those young vandals were I believe three of the twelve children of the vicar of Flitcham, my grandmother and two of her older brothers. I can imagine them cycling over - did Nan have her own bike, or did she travel on Frank's crossbar? - calling briefly on the couple who lived in part of the ruined castle as its caretakers, eating their picnic (washed down no doubt with lashings of ginger beer), and while 12 or 13 year old Cyril spent ages laboriously carving his initials large and clear, twenty-something Frank took his 9 or 10 year old sister round the castle before they both scratched their initials smaller and less deeply beside their brother's before they left.
Of course they shouldn't have done it and I can't be certain that it really was them, but it makes them - Nan especially - seem very close. I first went to Castle Rising with her in 1964 when she told me about going there with her brothers. I think from what she said that it must have been a favourite place which they visited frequently; years later I went back there with Mummy and we discovered this graffiti just as we were reminiscing about the earlier visit when I found I was resting my hand on this very stone as we talked. A quarter of a century later I have at last remembered to take my camera.
Anyway, here are the three believed to be the vandals.
Frank, Cyril and Phyllis all in photographs taken at about the time they entered their teens and went away to school with none of them looking terribly happy about it, which probably proves that neither graffiti nor stroppy teenagers are anything new.
skip2468
You have proved that graffiti which we curse is not something new. Thank you for sharing your treasures.
Recently, concrete slabs were laid in our footpath and BEN one of the workers just had to leave his mark behind.