Seven masons at one banker in Corsham, cutting Bath stone, Portland and York for old buildings and new ones. Every stone that leaves the yard carries the mark of the hand that dressed it.
Most jobs need all three: a wall repaired, a new step cut to match it, a name carved where it will still be read in a hundred years.
Restoration
We cut out decayed stone and piece in new to match the bed, the colour and the tooling of the old. Joints are raked out by hand and repointed in lime, never cement.
New work
Sawn and hand-dressed stone for extensions, porches and gardens, cut from templates we take on site so every piece fits the opening it was made for.
Carving
Inscriptions, house names, memorials and date stones cut by hand in V-section, and carved ornament renewed where the weather has taken the old away.
We cut what the building is already made of. These five pass through the yard most weeks; anything else we find and match.
Oolitic limestone · Corsham and Box
Honey to cream, soft from the mine and hardening in the air. Ashlar, carving and the repair of Georgian fronts.
White limestone · Isle of Portland
Hard, white and close-grained. Steps, plinths, memorials and anything that will be walked on or rained on.
Sandstone · West Yorkshire
Grey-buff and riven or sawn. Paving, sills, copings and hearths that take frost without complaint.
Shelly limestone · South Somerset
Golden brown and iron-rich. Mullions, quoins and dressings on village houses and churches.
Slate · North Wales
Blue-grey, split thin or sawn thick. Hearths, plaques and letter cutting at its sharpest.
We also match Purbeck, Hornton, Doulting and reclaimed stone from the building itself.
A stone is chosen, squared, worked and set by the same few hands. Nothing is cut until it has been drawn full size.
We measure the opening or the decayed stone, draw the profile full size and cut a zinc template from it.
The block is chosen for colour and grain and sawn square, marked so it will be laid the way it lay in the ground.
Mouldings are worked by hand with drag, claw and chisel until the profile meets the template along its whole length.
The mason cuts their mark on a hidden face, and the stone is fixed in lime by the team that made it.
A banker mark is a mason's signature, cut where nobody will see it until the building is taken down. Ours are below.
Banker mason · founded the yard
Draws every template and still cuts the hardest mouldings himself.
Letter cutter
Memorials, house names and the long inscriptions nobody else will take on.
Fixer mason
Sets what the banker makes, and runs the scaffold crews on site.
Carver
Corbels, finials and the odd gargoyle, copied from what the weather left.
Banker mason
Ashlar, steps and window surrounds for new houses and extensions.
Conservation mason
Lime mortars, surveys and the paperwork that listed buildings need.
Apprentice, third year
Cutting his first mouldings, and his mark is already on two churches.
Four jobs from the last two years: a terrace, a tower, an archway and a garden wall, each finished in the stone it began in.
Cut once set for good signed by hand
Every letter is drawn on the stone first, then cut in V-section with a mallet and a chisel. Slate takes the finest serifs; Portland and Bath stone take the weather.
An old wall is built to breathe. The mortar should be the weakest part of it, so that water and frost take the joint and leave the stone alone.
We mix our own mortars from hot lime, sand and crushed stone to match the colour of each wall, and we rake out the cement others left behind.
“They matched a parapet stone so well that the conservation officer asked which one was new. Nobody could point to it.”
“Ellie drew my father's stone three times until the spacing was right. It is the only thing in the churchyard that looks written.”
“The yard told us not to replace half the wall we had been quoted for elsewhere. The repair cost a third and it has been through two winters.”
The questions we hear most from the bottom of a ladder. Anything else, ask the yard.
Most of our work is listed. We prepare method statements and drawings for consent and work to the conservation officer's conditions.
Our fixing teams cover Wiltshire, Bath, Somerset and Gloucestershire. We cut stone for jobs anywhere and send it with fixing drawings.
Usually. We bring samples to site, and if the original quarry has closed we find the nearest bed in colour, grain and the way it weathers.
Allow eight to twelve weeks from an approved drawing. Churchyard rules can add time; we make the application for you.
No. We rake out cement where it is doing harm and repoint in a lime mortar mixed to match the original.
The first visit and a written quote are free within thirty miles of Corsham. Further afield we charge travel only.
Send a photo of the wall, the step or the stone you want cut. We reply within two working days and visit for free within thirty miles.
