The Cathedral Fellowship that has been established to pool the training resources of the nine English cathedrals that still have their own stonemasonry workshops was officially launched and held its inaugural training seminar at Gloucester Cathedral last month (October).

At the launch of the Fellowship, David Beattie, the Master of the Worshipful Company of Masons, presented his own congratulations and read a letter of support from the Prince of Wales. All 14 apprentices from the cathedrals\' workshops attended the five-day training seminar, with work beginning at 8am each day and going on to 5pm and with some evening activities. There were hands-on, practical sessions at the bankers as well as lectures to attend and visits to various parts of the cathedral to see the work of the masons there.

The seminar is to be held annually as an integral part of the cathedrals\' four-year apprenticeships that are followed by four years advanced training. At the successful conclusion of the programme trainees will be awarded a Cathedral Fellowship.

One of the hosts for the inaugural seminar at Gloucester was Pascal Mychalysin, the cathedral\'s Master Mason, who has been closely involved with the creation of the Fellowship. He was greatly encouraged by the positive response of the apprentices to the event. The principal aim of the Fellowship is to promote and standardise the pattern of stonemasonry apprenticeships in English Cathedrals, with an apprentices exchange programme to allow the cathedrals\' trainees to gain broader experience by working in several workshops. They also hope to extend the scheme so that exchanges can be made with workshops in other sectors of the stone industry. It is hoped the cathedral workshops might come to be seen as important contributors to wider training programmes, although having spoken to the National Heritage Training Group, Pascal says: "The problem for us, I think, is that we don\'t fit well into the existing framework. It will take time. One of our aims is to convince the industry and the sector at large that cathedra