lychfield
1 · What I want to see here
Lychfield is where the town on the plain buries its dead: one long lane climbing from the south, and up the slope more graves than the town has houses. The lane is the only worn ground there is. It passes the sexton's hut at the bottom, then a first few crosses set anyhow in the grass, and then the hill begins and the rows with it. The slope has been cut into banks, one above the other, each a long step of rough dark grass with its edge toward the town, and each bank carries one row of crosses on either side of the lane - crooked rows, but rows. Above the fourth bank, on a fifth that has nothing else on it, behind iron railings, is the one plot somebody paid for, with a stone figure sitting beside it. The trees up here are mostly dead, and the living ones keep to the edges as if they had been asked to.
2 · How to show it
- A burying ground and not a battlefield: the graves are in rows, the rows face the lane, and the lane goes to every one of them.
- Rank: one grave is behind railings at the very top with a statue beside it; the others are wooden crosses in the grass. The lane ends at the railed one.
- Older at the top, newer at the bottom: the rows are tight and full near the head of the lane and loosen into a scatter by the hut.
- Outside the town: no houses, one hut, and woods on three sides.
- Up: the map is portrait and the lane runs its whole height, so the plot at the head is the last thing reached - and on the way it crosses four banks. Each is a band of darker grass with a shaded edge along its south side and a strip of ordinary grass below it, so going up the page is going up a stair.
3 · What it needs
- graves - twenty-four of them, which is most of the map
- banked ground for the rows to stand on
- an iron-railed enclosure with a gate, for the one plot
- a seated stone figure
- a hut for the sexton, at the bottom
- a lane of bare earth
- dead trees among the graves
- living trees at the edges
- stumps
- a boulder or two
- a broken pillar
- Not in the pack: A hill with a face. The relief sheet is in the catalogue now (2026-10-09) and it is no use here: it draws rock under snow and rock under sand, never rock under grass. So the slope is banks of the long dark grass off the field sheet, which was drawn as a crop and stands half a square proud of the ground. It reads as terraces. It does not read as steep, and nothing says how high the top is.
- Not in the pack: Headstones. Every grave in the pack is the same wooden cross on a mound, so the rows cannot show rich and poor, or old and new, by the stones themselves - only by spacing and by the railings. The four sheets read on 2026-10-09 have none either.
- Not in the pack: A wall or a lych-gate round the whole ground. The stone wall kit is catalogued, but one walled rectangle per set of maps is enough and the orchard has it; here the trees are the boundary.
- Not in the pack: A chapel, a bell, a yew.
4 · The arrangement
A spine with ribs. The lane is the spine, south to north. Graves are the ribs: short rows either side of it, each row at right angles to the lane and each on its own bank, so the ribs are also the steps. The head of the spine is a small forecourt and the railed plot. The hut is at the foot. Density runs the opposite way to a town: emptiest at the entrance, fullest at the far end.
5 · What that means in (x, y)
30 x 40 squares, portrait. The lane is two squares wide, entering at cols 14-15 on the bottom row and drifting a column each way on the way up so it is not ruled. It opens into a forecourt at rows 8-10. The railed plot is five squares wide on row 7, cols 13-17, with its grave written on row 6, the row behind it, so the mound sits inside the rails and the cross stands up over the back one. That plot has a bank to itself, cols 9-22, rows 4-7. The four banks below are each three rows deep - rows 12-14, 16-18, 20-22 and 24-26 - and each is in two halves, cols 1-12 and cols 18-28, with the lane and a square of plain grass either side of it running up between. One row of plain grass separates each bank from the next: that row is the riser. Graves are on the MIDDLE row of a bank, rows 13, 17, 21 and 25, so that the shaded edge on the row below shows under them; a grave is three squares wide and its picture is two and a half tall, which is why a bank cannot be less than three deep. Graves in a row are one square apart, and each row starts at a different column, which is what makes them crooked. The top two banks are full, six graves each; the lower two have four. Below row 27 there are only strays. The hut is at cols 17-20, rows 31-33, with a patch of earth from its door to the lane.
7 · What it looks like
Read this against the paragraph at the top. That comparison is the only check that catches a map which is perfectly valid and is of nowhere.
6 · What was actually written
The same two grids as flat colour — earth, grass, and a block for every footprint. Anything in the render that is not here, the translation invented.
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What is in it
| 24 | grave | prop grave stone cross |
| 7 | tree_pine | tree living conifer large |
| 6 | tree_small_dark | tree living small conifer |
| 5 | trees_dead | tree dead pair large |
| 4 | tree_green | tree living broadleaf large |
| 4 | tree_dead_small | tree dead small |
| 3 | stump | prop stump |
| 2 | tree_fallen | tree dead small fallen |
| 2 | boulder | prop rock large |
| 1 | iron_plot | prop fence iron enclosure |
| 1 | statue | prop statue stone landmark |
| 1 | pillar | prop pillar stone ruin |
| 1 | hut_stone | building ruin stone doorway |
| 1 | well | prop well stone landmark |