A FORMER police officer and Interpol advisor has taken up a much safer new hobby – creating 3D images of 17th and 18th century East Lothian gravestones.

Douglas Ledingham, now retired, is hoping that the images he has made will be of interest to history buffs, and could even be turned into a graveyard trail for families during the current coronavirus lockdown.

Douglas, who lives in Longyester, near Gifford, with wife Mary, said he got the idea while cycling last year on the hunt for Neolithic cut-mark stones.

He said: “Historic Environment Scotland gave me access to a computer programme that allowed me to do 3D modelling of cut-mark stones as part of a project they were doing.

“I decided to practise the modelling on old gravestones from the 17th and 18th centuries, and that took me around 18 or 19 parish kirks in East Lothian; I modelled three or four of the best gravestones I could find in each of those locations.”

Douglas took between 60 and 150 photographs of each gravestone, then ran them through the software, which stitched them together to create a 3D image; a process that took four hours per image.

Now uploaded to a website, each 3D gravestone image can be spun round by the viewer to see all sides.

Douglas said: “Although a lot of these gravestones have been recorded previously, it’s just a simple black-and-white photograph.

“So to see the front, back and detail is really interesting. You can adjust the angle of the lighting and the shadows on the stone, which obviously you can’t do with a photograph.”

A filter can also be applied to the online images, enabling inscriptions on the headstones to be seen through covering such as lichen.

Douglas said: “Then you can really see the details, which is good for reading the stone and seeing what is written beneath the lichen.”

And the images reveal some fascinating details.

Douglas said: “There are no Christian crosses or things like that – it’s all skulls and crossbones, cherubs and the tools of the dead person’s trade, so there’s a glassmaker, a butcher, a tradesman.

“And one of the stones changed my idea about the Battle of Prestonpans, because it’s to one of the senior officers in [Sir John] Cope’s army; it says “barbarously murdered by four Highlanders after the battle”, which really gives you the impression that the locals here were not supportive of the Highland army and were very much supporters of the government army, which is not really what you get in the history books.”

Douglas said that it had been a great hobby to take on during lockdown, allowing him to explore parts of the county he hadn’t been to before. He also sees the fruits of his labour as a good resource for historians.

He said: “These images would allow them to do research on the gravestones without even visiting them because all the details are there. It would also make quite a good East Lothian tourist trail, if people wanted to go on a hunt for these gravestones.

“Some of them are quite morbid but I think they’re quite beautiful things myself.”

To view the 3D images, go to sketchfab.com/Douglas.Ledingham/collections/east-lothian-headstones