Gone are the days when staircases were simply a means of getting from one floor to the next. They have now become a design feature that can change the look and feel of a house and the absolute height of fashion in the most stylish of houses is a cantilevered stone staircase.

For such a solid material, stone produces incredibly fine cantilevered staircases, creating the feeling of light and space. For those with an engineering frame of mind, it is often even a source of amazement that a staircase that takes its support from just one wall, leaving the string side open, can support even its own weight.

Masonry companies with the skills to make a cantilevered staircase have found an increasing demand for them in recent years.

One company that has enjoyed that growth is CWO in Chichester, Sussex. There, Adam Stone says: “There are several advantages to having a cantilevered, or structural, staircase in your home. They increase space and light as there is no need for support to the string, so the space taken up by the staircase is minimal, allowing the stair hall to be much more open. This provides real, usable space and allows light to flood in where more traditional stairs can feel dark and constricted”.

The first cantilevered staircases were by the Venetian architect Palladio. When visiting Venice, the architect Inigo Jones sketched Palladio’s staircase in La Carita, later using this inspiration to design the tulip staircase for the Queen’s house in Greenwich in 1630. The next known British example was designed by Christopher Wren and James Hooke in the Monument, which CWO have been restoring lately using Pooil Vaaish stone. The Monument was built to commemorate the great fire of London of 1666.  

Throughout the 18th Century, huge numbers of London town houses were built with cantilevered staircases as their principal stair. Notable examples available for public viewing in London, apart from the Monument, include: the Geometric stair of St Paul’s Cathedral; Somerset House; The John Soane Museum; Hampstead Court. Outside London, many of the country’s stately homes have cantilevered staircases – such as Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire, Benningborough Hall near York and Kingston Bagpuize House in Oxfordshire.

The advantage of using stone to create the staircase is that it is such a versatile material. Because it can be worked into almost any shape, the design possibilities are limited only by the imagination of the designers. Those bold enough can create a truly awe-inspiring sculpture that could become the signature piece of a development.

Costs for a simple, unmoulded staircase are in the region of £1,250 per tread, with elaborate and ornate staircases in excess of £3,500 per tread.

This type of staircase is exceptionally long lived with most of the earliest examples still in existence and in use today. So, with the correct choice of stone there is no reason not to expect a staircase built today to be providing that wow factor in another 300 years or so.