星空传媒

A small village on the Essex/Suffolk border has commissioned Bradling to install a digital CCTV system to protect its church and surrounding land, including the graveyard, from unwelcome attention 鈥�not from ghosts but from humans.

The unwelcome attention arises from the church鈥檚 close proximity to Borley Rectory which was destroyed by fire in 1939. Since then the spooky reputation has transferred to the church.

The newly installed VCL surveillance system is being used for protection against anti-social visitors attracted by these historic ghostly tales.

Arriving on foot and in cars, the visitors have caused incidents involving noise, nuisance, vandalism and thefts in and around the church. The visitor problems have, over a number of years, afflicted residents in this scattered village of 100 or so inhabitants of Borley.

Having also paid the price in terms of significantly increased insurance premiums for Borley church, the villagers are turning the tables on them by deploying a sophisticated array of VCL dome cameras and digital recording equipment to deter them and collect evidence.

Paranormal activity

Grant Brannon, Sales Manager Bradling Security Ltd, said that the origins of the situation affecting Borley depended on which story is believed.

Borley is said to have offered every type of paranormal phenomena, including poltergeists, s茅ances, voices, footsteps and choirs singing.

In 1362 Benedictine monks built a monastery on the site which would later hold the rectory. Legend told of a monk from the monastery eloping with a nun from the Bures nunnery, some seven miles to the south east.

A friend of the monk was to drive the getaway carriages, but they were caught 鈥� the monk hanged and the nun bricked up alive in the wall of the nunnery. Tunnels supposedly connected the two locations.

Whatever the truth, Borley鈥檚 residents now have the 21st century phenomenon to deal with.

Armed with a Home Office grant towards the 拢9000 surveillance system, the parish committee commissioned Bradling to design, install and maintain the equipment.

The company called in support from VCL to supply everything from an interior camera surveying activity within the church, to motion detectors triggering monitoring and recording of movements in the lane outside the churchyard and around nearby buildings including the vicarage.

Interior camera

It鈥檚 intended that Borley church will soon be opened to the public at times outside normal services, prompting the installation of an interior camera.

  This 3-inch Ademco colour mini dome with varifocal lens will help protect artefacts such as the church鈥檚 14 foot high Waldegrave tomb which dominates the nave and is a legacy of the Waldegrave family鈥檚 connections with the village.

King Henry VIII took possession of the Manor of Borley and gave it to Sir Edward Waldegrave and the family connection lasted 300 years.

Meanwhile, in the church porch, a day/night-colour/mono Pecan Bullet camera with built-in 10m infra-red lamps for illumination keeps watch over anyone intent on entering the church or loitering outside its locked gates.

A third camera ensures that anyone passing through wireless passive infra-red detectors prompts instant recording of their activities in these preset positions surrounding the churchyard.

This is achieved using a wall-mounted Orbiter Gold Microsphere external dome camera with a Regent mount design bracket and colour coded housing, designed to blend in with their surroundings.

Vandal resistance

A vandal-resistant cage has been added to provide extra protection. The movement detectors are wired directly to the dome camera unit, which has eight alarm inputs built in to it. This high-speed camera has pan/tilt/zoom capabilities and an 18x zoom (4x digital). It can also be connected to a TCP/IP or similar private network, enabling authorised users to view its operation at any time via a PC.

All of the cameras use NVT technology, which is built in to the Orbiter Gold model at no extra cost. Compared with traditional coaxial and fibre optic cabling, NVT connectability offers a more cost effective, and easily installed video transmission alternative for any point-to-point application, using a single multi-pair UTP cable.

Digital storage

Main control over the cameras is carried out using a VCL Maxcom telemetry system. A Maxcom 8 mini matrix switcher provides selection of the different camera views, which are displayed on a 14inch Ademco colour monitor.

These pictures are stored on a 9-channel Ademco digital video recorder, which boasts an 80Gb capacity (expand-able to 320Gb). At Borley, this allows two weeks of recording at the specified rate of 50 frames per second.

Bradling鈥檚 Sales Manager Grant Brannon said they specified VCL equipment because it saved them time and money on-site, gave strong techni-cal support and good training, both on and off-site .

鈥溾�� and on the rare occasion that anything does fail in-situ the company has procedures for next-day provision of new replacement units, which is a service we like.鈥�

Meanwhile VCL鈥檚 Area Sales Manager Richard Hancock has liaised with Brannon on a requested post-installation modification to the system involving fitting infra-red lighting to the exterior dome camera to improve its night vision.

n Video Controls Ltd: 8 Aston Fields Road, Whitehouse Industrial Estate, Runcorn, Cheshire WA7 3DL. Tel: 01928 754000. Web: www.videocontrols.co.uk