Against a background of economic difficulties the stone industry has, nevertheless, had some reasons to celebrate during the past 12 months. NSS takes a look at some of the industry’s significant events and developments in 2011.

One of the year’s early highlights came in March when the trade and its customers gathered for the ninth in the series of the Natural Stone Shows in London, held, as usual, at the ExCeL exhibition centre.

The Show is usually held every other year but had been put back a year from 2010 because of the economic crisis. The crisis clearly is not over but the business world has adapted to the conditions and although the Show, which had previously grown with each successive event, was smaller than the 2008 record-breaker, it only slipped back to the size of the 2006 event in terms of exhibitors and visitors. Both groups seemed completely happy with the business they did.

Show Director Richard Bradbury told NSS at the time: “It was encouraging to see so many visitors and to hear such good reports from exhibitors about the number of meaningful enquiries they have received. Clearly confidence in the UK is growing.”

The Show is now back in its two-yearly cycle and the next is planned for 2013, although a bit later in the year (30 April – 2 May) in response to the industry’s requirements. Bookings for space at the Show are now being taken (contact Anna on Tel: 0115 945 3897 / anna@qmj.co.uk).

The Natural Stone & Building Conservation Conference is also held at ExCeL in association with the exhibition. It takes place over the three days of the Show and this time included the presentation of the first Stone Federation Sustainability Awards.

This is part of Stone Federation Great Britain’s response to the growing concern about sustainability in construction. The aim of the Awards is to emphasise just how environmentally friendly natural stone is as a building material.

There were three categories in these inaugural awards:

l Innovation. Won by Forest of Dean Stone Firms (Royal Forest Pennant) for the installation of a hydroelectricity generation plant. Nick Horton, Managing Director of FoD Stone Firms, estimated the move would not only reduce CO2 emissions but would also produce a return on investment of 14% a year, thanks to the Government’s Feed-in Tariff, which, as we all know, is not now looking so generous – at least, not for new solar energy schemes. As it has turned out for FoD Stone Firms, it has been a particular dry year and the plant has not generated as much electricity as had been hoped.

l Sustainability Awareness. Won by Marshalls’ Stancliffe Stone for a biodiversity project at their quarry in Stoke Hall, Derbyshire. It gained accreditation to the Wildlife Trust’s Biodiversity Benchmark – the first business in Derbyshire and the first dimensional stone business in the UK to achieve and integrate this into its management system. It took Stoke Hall two years to achieve accreditation, showing their commitment to wildlife and biodiversity.

l Landscape. Won for the resurfacing of the base court at Hampton Court Palace in Purbeck Limestone and Kentish Rag by

stone contractor A T Knott & Sons Ltd. The client was Historic Royal Palaces, the architect Purcell Miller Tritton LLP, the main contractor Mansell Construction Services Ltd. The project was the recreation of a hard landscaping scheme originally designed by Christopher Wren and dating back to 1699. All new paving was laid in a loose bedding of recycled concrete and crushed limestone. This alternative bedding and jointing technique was derived from historic (but in Britain almost forgotten) loose laid paving traditions. By avoiding cast concrete, sub-grade base slabs and bedding mortars it was possible to reduce C02 emissions significantly, not only during construction but also in the future when maintenance works need to take place because all material can be re-used in situ.

Another significant highlight of the year was also staged at ExCeL London, this time in October. It was WorldSkills.

It was a huge event with Team UK up against 1,000 other competitors from 52 countries in 46 disciplines. Chris Berridge gained a Gold Medal in stonemasonry, helping the British team to fifth place overall – their best ever position in the medals table – with four golds, two silvers, six bronze and 12 Medallions for Excellence.

The event had been expected to attract about 150,000 visitors during its four days but actually had more than 200,000, including 2,300 school, college and community groups. 72% of visitors were aged between 14 and18 – youngsters who, it is hoped, will have gained a completely new view of vocational occupations. Even the Prime Minister, London Mayor Boris Johnson and Business Secretary Vince Cable visited the event on different days.

Kevin Calpin, the former York College stonemasonry lecturer who has been WorldSkills’ chief stonemasonry expert since 2004, told NSS during the WorldSkills contest that Chris Berridge had been a pleasure to train with. “He’s one of the best stonemasons I have ever known,” said Kevin.

Kevin prepares the UK masons for the contest, which involves taking them back to basics to get used to working to 0.5mm accuracy under the pressure of the competition – because that’s what it takes to win. To maintain that level of concentration and precision over four days requires mental and physical stamina. Kevin said Chris had been open to learning and his planning for the event had been impeccable.

The next WorldSkills event is in Leipzig in 2013 but WorldSkills UK were so impressed with the enthusiasm for the event in London that they plan to have a similar, though smaller, national event every year and take it to different parts of the country.

Another highlight this year was seeing two British stones become available again in significant quantities. One is Box Ground Bath limestone, a new source of which is being extracted from Hanson Bath & Portland’s Hartham Park underground quarry. The other is Hunters Hill Yorkstone from Whitworth quarry that has been brought back into production as paving by Aggregate Industries’ commercial hard landscaping company, Charcon.

Box Ground is probably the best known of the stones from the Combe Down Oolite, which is the most dense and durable of the Bath stones. It was last produced in the 1950s but when Hanson Bath & Portland took over Hartham Park underground quarry, opened in the 1840s just 200m from the original source of Box Ground, they knew they would find the stone if they tunnelled deeper underground.

In 2010 the decision was made to start preparatory work to access the Box Ground beds that core drilling had identified as starting 8m below what was then the floor of the quarry. They started to tunnel into the floor at a gradient of 1:8. On 29 June last year, a date that has now become significant in the history of Hartham Park, 60m along the new tunnel, they hit the Box Ground beds. A month later the first block of Box Ground was extracted from Hartham Park. This year Bath & Portland felt they were in a position to be able to supply sufficient amounts of the stone to meet demand and they launched it on to the market.

For Charcon, the move was easier. Seeing the growing interest in British stone for hard landscaping projects they moved into Aggregate Industries’ former aggregates quarry on Hunters Hill, high on the Yorkshire moors.

The quarry has significant reserves of block stone, although as aggregate producers like to break the stone up as much as possible by blasting it Charcon had to remove considerable quantities of blast-shocked stone to reach undamaged block suitable for sawing into paving.

Two major projects that could be good for British stone had mixed fortunes. The Strategic Stone Study, the most ambitious ever survey of the sources and uses of building stones in England, became a victim of Government cuts, while a geological timeline at the British Geological Survey (BGS) in Keyworth, Nottingham, finally got under way 10 years after the idea for what was then called the ‘Earthwise’ geological garden was first mooted.

The Strategic Stone Study has been headed by Tarnia McAlester for English Heritage. Her contribution became part-time this year as the Department for Communities & Local Government (DCLG) withdrew its support for the project. It had provided £280,000 of just over £500,000 allocated to the project when it got under way in 2007. The rest came from English Heritage. It was anticipated another £500,000 would be needed to complete the project. The information gathered is being entered on to a Geological Information System (GIS) on a freely accessible website (http://maps.bgs.ac.uk/BuildingStone).

It was also intended to present the data as county atlases, available as PDF documents. Some have been produced – and useful and informative documents they are. The cuts mean it is unlikely that any more will now be produced.

By juggling their finances, English Heritage have managed to keep the Study alive until the end of the current financial year, when it is anticipated that about 60% of the 47 areas the country has been divided into will have been surveyed, although English Heritage says they include the main traditional stone building areas of the country.

Attempts are being made to find alternative funding to enable the project to be finished, although if it is to include all building stone uses it will never be finished because more buildings are going up and being altered and repaired all the time.

The Strategic Stone Study was a response to the Symonds Report on the stone industry, Planning for the Supply of Natural Building and Roofing Stone in England & Wales, produced in 2003. It complained about the lack of information about which stones from which sources had been used where. The Strategic Stone Study was intended to answer those questions so that planning authorities could avoid sterilising important sources of building stone by allowing such sites to be built upon. They should encourage the extraction of the stones.

But if the digital collection of data about stone is stuttering, the physical collection of stone for a display in the real world – the BGS geological timeline – is moving on nicely.

The hard landscaping is part of a major development of the Keyworth site that it is intended should cover the whole geology of the British Isles, including all the commercially available hard landscaping natural stones, which their producers have supplied at favourable rates for the project.

The first part of the scheme was completed at the end of the summer. It includes examples of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks from all four countries of the United Kingdom. “We want to show what can be done with British materials,” Steve Parry, a mineralogist, petrologist and building stone expert at the BGS who is working on the project alongside contractors CED, told NSS.

With stone still being the material of choice on many construction projects – whether as cladding, landscaping or interiors – it appears (although often without credit) in many of the construction industry’s awards schemes.

One of the award schemes that does credit the materials and the contractors who use it is The Tile Association Tile Awards. This year’s awards were presented, as usual, at the Hilton Metropole Hotel at the NEC, Birmingham, in April – and there was more stone than ever among the winners.

You would expect the Best Natural Product category winner to be stone (which it was – the Elite collection of Indonesian stone from the CP Group), but there was also so much stone in the other categories.

The Best Use of a Tile by a House Developer involved Chinese and Portuguese stone tiles. The Best Use of Tile in the Leisure and Hospitality Industry went to the contractor at the Savoy, where Carrara and Marquina stone tiles were used. The Best Use of Tile in a Private House was for the stone tiles supplied by Natural Stone Emporium. Stone tile specialists Mandarin won the Excellence in Multiple Retailing category. And almost every category had stone represented somewhere among the short-listed finalists.

There was stone as well in all the winning projects in a new award scheme started this year by English Heritage in conjunction with Andrew Lloyd Webber. It is called the Angel Awards and recognises the efforts of people who have saved historic buildings, often by sheer determination and hard work.

The prizes were presented in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Palace Theatre in London’s West End at the end of October during a spectacular event that featured Graham Norton, Michael Winner, Danielle Hope and Clare Balding, as well as Andrew Lloyd Webber himself – and they certainly know how to stage a spectacular event.

Rather more subdued but no less significant to those who were involved in it was the four-yearly Worshipful Company of Masons Craft Awards for stonework in London. The Awards were presented at the Guildhall, the home of the Lord Mayor of London, who hosted the Awards lunch, in September.

Chichester, Sussex, stone and conservation specialists CWO took four of the six honours. Their winning projects were: the Richard Green Modern Gallery in New Bond Street; Buckingham Palace Quadrangle; The Monument; the St Lawrence Jewry Drinking Fountain.

The Landscaping Award went to stone company GU Contracts and civil engineers Mulleady for Elizabeth Street and stone specialists Fairhaven & Woods won the small scale monuments and carving commendation for their work on the Jacobean fireplaces at Crosby Hall in Chelsea.

The Highest Award of the Masons Company, the Certificate of Excellence & Achievement, was presented for the first time ever. It was given to St Paul’s Cathedral for the conservation, repair and cleaning that has been carried out there and was accepted by Martin John Stancliffe, Surveyor of the Fabric of the Cathedral, and Head Mason Alan Horsfield.

For the Surveyor of the Fabric the Award marked the end of 21 years at the Cathedral because he retires from the position on Christmas Day.

On the subject of awards, don’t forget 2012 will see the two-yearly Natural Stone Awards once again being presented at Lords Cricket ground in London in November. Deadline for entries is April – entry forms are available from Stone Federation (you can find contact details for the federation on page 42).

Another area that is helping to promote the use of stone by capturing the public imagination are stone carving festivals. They attract crowds wherever they are held – unsurprisingly, as seeing a block of stone transformed into sculpture and masonry at the hands of a skillful craftsperson is a delight.

One of the main stone carving events each year is the European Stone Carving Festival. It was started in 1999 by Freiburg Technical College for Stonemasonry & Stone Carving in Germany and since then has been touring Europe, being held in a different town and country each year. It has been to England, when Canterbury Cathedral was the host.

This year the Festival returned home to Freiburg, where 140 masons and carvers from 14 countries (including the UK) worked at bankers set up in Freiburg’s Escholpark, where 14,000 people visited to see the event.

Each year a winning piece is selected and this year the prize went to the Indonesian Ongky Wijana, who now lives on the Isle of Man. The thunderous applause from both visitors and participants showed the approval for the unanimous decision of the international jury.

Two apprentices from the UK received prizes for their work in the apprentice category. They were Peter Loizou and Jacob David Oakley.

In 2012, the Festival is on its travels again. It will be held at Trondheim Cathedral, Norway, from 29 June to 1 July. Anyone wanting to take part should register before the end of April.

The UK had its own stone carving festival at St Laurence Church, Ludlow. It attracted 21 masons and carvers. The public voted the four-sided face of Cronos by Tom Brown as the best piece produced at the event while the carvers themselves chose a lizard by Saul Sheldon. n