When does engraving your name or initials into a building stop being vandalism and morph into historic importance?

For example, in one of the car parks at Westwood Cross there is the last remaining bit of wall that once formed the hospital which occupied the site in times gone by.

Of mild interest in itself but infinitely more fascinating are some of the engravings which have been chiselled into it. Namely from those serving during the war who, while recovering, thought they’d leave a lasting reminder in the very fabric of the place. There are names and dates.

Worth a look when you’re next parking up next to it and heading into Primark.

Likewise, earlier this year a Georgian door was found at Dover Castle – coated in the graffiti etched into it by bored English soldiers as England found itself at war with our French neighbours and threatened with invasion by Napoleon in the latter part of the 18th century.

Today, they are fascinating in and of themselves; to be able to trace with your finger the marks of someone from historic moments in time.

Likewise, at Canterbury Cathedral there are etchings in the stone believed to date back to those taking part in pilgrimages to see when Thomas Becket was slain in the 12th century. Which rather dispels the theory this sort of vandalism is a modern-day phenomenon.

Researchers have also found traces of medieval graffiti at a number of churches in Swale.

But I wonder if, at the time, there was plenty of tutting and muttering at such indelible marks left at these grand places?

Can you imagine the fuss if a teenager etched his initials and those of his beloved in the walls of the cathedral or castle today? Yet in 100 years, we may look back and ponder whatever became or TJ and KL and wonder if they really did last ‘4 ever’. Future historians might wax lyrical about the young lovers – looking at how they would have survived the pandemic and a time of global uncertainty.

Because today there’s pretty much a zero-tolerance approach to such markings on historic sites.

And for good reason.

Recently there have been incidents of people carving their name in the fragile plaster of the houses which survived the volcanic eruption in Pompeii or the walls of Rome’s Colosseum.

Quite rightly, we consider it the actions of gross stupidity and selfishness. But in 1,000 years?

Clearly, it would be completely wrong to condone such action, but will it always continue? The writing is surely on the wall.