This is a simple offset cache hidden near the beautiful church of St Stephen. The church is located alongside the ancient and historically important Watling Street where it enters the city of St Albans. The church was one of three that were used to prepare pilgrims on their way to St Albans abbey.
Collect some simple information from the churchyard in order to determine the coordinates of the cache.
Please close the container carefully and replace exactly as found. There is space for swaps and trackables but if you remove something then please replace it with an item of equivalent value :-)
St. Stephen’s is a beautiful old parish church, founded in 948 A.D. The Anglo Saxon building was small, probably divided into two rooms and without a tower. Little remains of this building, but the small window, deep set in rough masonry, just by the door to the Parish Centre has been dated to around 950 A.D. The building today is largely medieval, but it was sympathetically restored from a near ruinous condition in the 1860s. The spire, replacing a “Hertfordshire spike” on the tower, dates from this time. The pews and ornamental woodwork are Victorian, and the attractive pulpit and canopy date from 1936. The eagle lectern is a copy of a much earlier famous one which until recently stood in its place. There is a leaflet in the church giving details of the history of the early much travelled and plundered lectern.
Outside the northwest wall of the church there is a bench given by a person called Swanston.
Question 1: in which year was the bench given (last two digits only) ?
Question 2: how many letters are there in the person's first name ?
Question 3: convert each specified letter of the first name into a number (A=1, B=2 etc.)
The cache is at the following location relative to the published coordinates
Northings minus Q2 minus Q3(1) minus Q3(4)
Westings minus Q1 minus Q2 minus Q3(6) plus Q3(2) plus Q3(1)
You can check your answers for this puzzle on GeoChecker.com.