Dep said:
Peter Burgess wrote:There is an excellent photographic record of the grafitti.
Do you restore the grafitti using the photograph as a 'template'? Or do you put the whole thing down to experience and try to educate people to be more careful in the future.
It is frustrating to be showing someone new around the place, and saying that there used to be some interesting inscriptions but we can't show them to you anymore.
I think that to attempt to re-draw the graffiti - however good your results, will not cut it. This will never be more than a modern copy and therefore of dubious value.
For what its worth, I was involved in publishing a record of the "Miners' Toast" and associated grafitti in Peak Cavern/Speedwell. This included everything that was present at the time regardless of age.
The idea of re-creating removed grafitti is not the same as restoration of an object such as a historic building, ancient monument, vintage vehicle or whatever, where replacement of worn out, damaged or lost material is done in order to prevent further damage or to restore to former condition where the amount of material replaced was a small part of the whole. A wholesale replacement may have some value in understanding and appreciation but is hardly the same as the original object. As with the story of "my grandfather's axe" where grandfather claims he has "had this axe for over 50 years" and has "only had to replace the handle three times and the head twice". Being able to see a faithful facsimile of Lascaux Cave in France, created nearby to the original in order to protect the original, is hardly the same as seeing the original pre-historic drawings.
Graffiti in itself if it is to be preserved is beacuse of age, or some historic record or because it was written by somebody of note. Once it has been removed any replacement would be the same as replacing a destroyed Mona Lisa with a modern copy. The intrinsic worth of the graffiti can never be replaced.
On a different note: If you visit Cumberland Cavern/Wapping Mine near Matlock Bath, one chamber's ceiling is covered with a huge amount of scrawls in soot, densely packed and covering many square metres. Any single item is probably worthless (being along the lines of "kilroy was here" and written by regular visitors in the 70's who used the area for partying, etc.), but when you see the complete ceiling it seems almost as if it was some sort of huge work of art. I wouldn't be bothered really of it were scrubbed off, but then as long as it is there, it does seem interesting.