First there was the Scottish Stone Liaison Group. Then there was the Welsh Stone Forum. Now plans are being laid to create an English Stone Forum.

The model for the English group, as it was for the Welsh Stone Forum, is the Scottish Stone Liaison Group (SSLG), established with the financial backing of Historic Scotland and the considerable efforts of Historic Scotland\'s director of technical conservation, research and education, Ingval Maxwell. Maxwell was at the meeting to establish an English Stone Forum, as was John Davies from the Welsh Stone Forum.

The aim of SSLG was - and is - to bring together the Scottish stone industry, its clients, construction industry professionals, landowners, planners and everyone else involved in the process of extracting, working and using stone in building and conservation.

SSLG was formed in 1995 and officially launched as a company limited by guarantee by Scotland\'s Deputy Minister for Culture & Sport at the time, Rhona Brankin, in May 2000.

The Deputy Minister said then: "I do see this as a role model. Priorities in England and Wales may be different, but the structure and concept of the model we have developed here are important. I don\'t think there\'s any reason why this formula can\'t be used elsewhere."

The Welsh were first to show they agreed when they held their Stone in Wales conference in Cardiff in April 2002. They always intended the conference to be the precursor of a Welsh equivalent of SSLG and later that year the Welsh Stone Forum was formed, although with less enthusiastic support from Cadw, the Welsh equivalent of Historic Scotland and English Heritage, than the Scots had received from Historic Scotland.

Now there are plans for an English version of SSLG which, at the moment at least, is adopting the Welsh idea of calling itself a \'forum\'.

The force behind the move in England is the Geoconservation Commission of the Geological Society, which intends to give the Forum initial momentum through a conference it is planning to stage in York in March 2005.

The foundations for the conference were laid at a meeting of the Commission in London in January. As well as Ingval Maxwell and John Davies, those present included Peter Doyle, the chair of the Commission, and Mick Stanley, its secretary, Brian Marker from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM), Graham Lott from the British Geological Survey and Ian Thomas from the National Stone Centre in Derbyshire.

The group was deliberately kept small at this stage to avoid too many interests, possibly conflicting, being involved in the setting up of the conference.

Afterwards, Peter Doyle said the Scottish Stone Liaison Group had been a "rather successful operation" and "my view is very strongly that we should emulate the Scottish model".

Mick Stanley responds to the suggestion that England has fallen behind its Celtic cousins in this matter by saying it was probably easier for the various interests to be brought together by the smaller nations of the UK than it is in England.

One aim of the English group is intended to be the establishment of a library of stones used historically in England as well as those currently produced. They want to suggest modern matching alternatives to historical stones, which many in the conservation and planning fields would greatly appreciate, although such a list might prove to be controversial.

The Geological Survey already has a massive collection of stones, including thin sections for microscopic examination, and there are other collections, like that of the Natural History Museum\'s, that can be viewed by appointment. But the English Stone Forum would like to establish a more readily available, easily accessed collection.

The meeting felt there had been a lack of investment by the stone industry in the UK, which was a reason why quarries in Britain had closed and why stone production in the UK tended to be small scale.

One aim of SSLG has been to improve indigenous supply of stone in Scotland and it was felt the English Stone Forum should try to achieve a similar objective in England.

To kick off the English Stone Forum\'s stone collection, consultant Barry Hunt of IBIS is offering half-price petrographic examinations to BS EN 12407 to anyone sending him reference samples of stone.

The examinations will cost £99. The donators will get a cheap petrography, which most of them will need anyway for BS EN 12407. The samples received, the thin-sections made and the information obtained will be donated by Barry to the Forum.

Barry says he can accept samples of any size and shape, although he would prefer them to be squares of at least 400mm sides. Send stone samples to: