Elderly churches have a unique shape with their high towers and long naves. There seems to be few if any reported measurement of pressure distribution on churches. Churches are naturally ventilated buildings and therefore when the wind speed is high  the  wind becomes an important driving force for ventilation.

A model in scale 1:200 was built of a 19^th century Swedish church provided with a crawl space. The pressure on the façade of the model was recorded in 42 points. With the aim of studying the ventilation of the church dedicated measuring points were located on windows, doors and in the positions corresponding to the location of the openings in the crawl space. 

Some field trials were undertaken with the scope of measuring the time history of the static pressure on the façade in some positions corresponding to measuring points on the wind tunnel model. Examples of these measurements are  reported in the paper.

With the aim of measuring the “region of influence” on the ground caused by the church, also the static pressure on the ground was recorded in the wind tunnel tests.  The static pressure on ground was recorded with a pressure plate provided with 400 pressure taps arranged in a quadratic pattern.