Ordnance Survey mark on an ancient church in Leicester.

[Guest]

As part of last Sunday's walkabout with the camera,I spotted this incised into the wall of the ancient church of St.Mary de Castro Leicester.

From the research I've done,it would appear to be an Ordnance Survey mark,as denoted by the horizontal line above the arrow.When and why it was put there,I have no idea,but when the church eventually re-opens,I'll call in and ask the questions.
IMG_0345 by Roy Widdowson, on Flickr

[antoeknee]

This page might shed some light on tbis

https://www.stonehouseheritage.co.uk/ordnance-survey-bench-marks/

[Guest]

This page might shed some light on tbis
https://www.stonehouseheritage.co.uk...y-bench-marks/

Thanks,I've just looked at the OS website,and apparently these marks are quite common on buildings,there being 500,000 of them.They are called Bench Marks.

[John Liddle]

We've got one of those! It's a little bit bruised and battered, but still there. If memory serves it is 20 metres above mean sea level.

Bench Mark.jpg

[Guest]

Thanks John,I guess with there being half a million of them scattered around,they pop up all over the place.The trick is in spotting them!

[Guest]

What's your opinion of my shot,from a technical point of view? I cropped heavily to emphasise the mark.

[Swanny48]

Unfortunately it is quite common for these to be built into stone walls and there were several times when I, as a civil engineering contractor's engineer, I would find that when I tried to level between two bench marks, there would be an error, so I'd have to do it again. Usually I'd get the same error and find out that the owner of the wall had rebuilt it with the bench mark stone in the wrong place, not knowing what it was .

John

ps. I probably wouldn't have cropped so heavily.

[Guest]

That must have been extremely irritating.

Point taken about the crop so I'll go to the original image tonight and crop less before posting it again.

[Guest]

No crop this time
IMG_0345-2 by Roy Widdowson, on Flickr

[Swanny48]

I prefer the second but would probably have shown bit more at the top as well.
As always Roy, it's what you prefer that counts, not the suggestions made by others.

John

[Guest]

I prefer the second but would probably have shown bit more at the top as well.
As always Roy, it's what you prefer that counts, not the suggestions made by others.

John

No more top to show,this is"as shot" re the framing.No crop at all.

[AlexR!]

Hi Roy, sorry, late to this discussion, and I realise I'm not adding to the discussion on the quality of your image, but as a land surveyor I have an interest in all OS pillars and marks. Like John I have used them for levelling (i.e. they provide a known height above sea level, you use instrumentation to measure the difference in height between it and the elevation of the thing you want to know) in the past, however they have now been superseded by other technologies. But there is a whole world of enthusiasts out that that 'bag' trig points and bench marks, so if you are interested in details of any in particular these are in open source databases such as (for your one):

https://www.bench-marks.org.uk/bm39359

[Guest]

Thanks Alex,some very interesting info there.