They call this the information age but information about the use of the varied geology of the British Isles in its built heritage is sketchy and dispersed. A British Geological Survey symposium, titled ‘Building a Future for Stone’, at The Geological Society in London earlier this month (October) had the bold aim of opening communication channels between the diverse interests in stone

It is not easy to find information about stones used in the built heritage of the British Isles. Some is simply not stored in any kind of accessible retrieval system and even that which is can be extraordinarily difficult to find, often incomplete and sometimes simply wrong. There is no national and accessible database that identifies stones used in buildings and ties that information in with the sources of that stone.

Some information is available – for example, English Heritage have a record of England’s 370,000 listed buildings, many of which are pictured on the website www.imagesofengland.org.uk, but there are scant details, especially about the building materials used.

Creating a database that does pull all that information together, for England at least, is what English Heritage and the British Geological Society (BGS) are working together on creating in the Strategic Stone Study.

And the BGS want to go further, to become a hub of information about how the diverse geology of the British Isles has been and continues to be used to create the grand and the vernacular built heritage of Britain.

A step on the way towards that end was taken earlier this month (October) when the BGS hosted a building stone symposium at The Geological Society headquarters in London. They invited planners, architects, stone producers, conservation specialists and others with an interest in the use of stone to the symposium to identify and address key issues for heritage and new construction.

As well as the Strategic Stone Study, those involved in carrying out similar work of matching stones to buildings in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland also reported on their projects and the Geological Survey of Belgium gave its views on the subject.

Although those attending the symposium did include some people from all sectors of the target audience, fewer than 100 people came to listen to the presentations, which emphasises a problem – communication.

Bodies with diverse interests obtain funding from various sources to go off and carry out their particular piece of research without reference to other work being carried out by other bodies in the same field, usually in the fond belief that their work is unique and ground-breaking and somehow does not need to relate to other work. The result can be a duplication of effort and incompatible results. If the BGS can become a central hub for the collation of all this information, as they aspire to be, and the information can be easily searched and referenced, they will have performed a great service to the industry.

One more move on the way to achieving that coincided with the symposium in London – the handing over of the 2,500-sample Natural History Museum stone collection to the BGS on long-term loan.

The collection will now be housed at the BGS in Nottingham, bringing to around 20,000 the number of building stone samples in the Survey’s collection that is part of its offer to help those wanting to match newly quarried stone with original material.

There are other stone collections and the Survey would like to have a record of them all. Some, such as the Sedgewick and Brunel, were mentioned during the symposium. Anyone with information about other collections is invited to let the BGS know about them.

Graham Lott of the BGS told the meeting: “I’m passionate about collections like ours. They’re important not just for historic buildings, but should encourage the use of indigenous stones in new build.”

He also called on anyone who had records of work carried out on historic stone buildings to let the Survey know about it. And when stone was replaced in a building and the old stone was simply going to be dumped, he said the Survey would like to have that stone. His aim was always to have a link back to the quarry that supplied the stone so that people would realise the importance of quarrying.

He hoped the data set BGS wanted to make available would encourage architects to come and look at the stone collection in Nottingham. “There’s no substitute for seeing it.”

Ewan Hyslop, the project manager for building stone research and consultancy at the BGS in Edinburgh, showed some dramatic slides of what happens when stone that does not match the original in look or performance is used for repairs. In some cases using a less porous stone for repairs had had as significant an impact on the erosion of the original stone as the well recorded results of using hard cements and for the same reasons: because moisture is prevented from migrating through the fabric.

The BGS is trying to bridge the gap between the modern stone supply industry and the heritage sector, because as keynote speaker James Simpson of Simpson & Brown Architects in Edinburgh said: “I believe we have now come to the point where we should think of modern construction and traditional building as two entirely different things.”

James, made an OBE for services to the built environment in 2007, pointed out the differences between traditional and modern build: traditional buildings used local, minimally processed materials with a consequently low carbon footprint that were weak, permeable and flexible; new build didn’t.

He said it was important to train for both and supply for both.

Stone was no more than a decorative finish these days. There was nothing wrong with that and the stone supply industry had to be geared up to supply the fabricated components needed. But it also had to supply the local stones needed to maintain the vernacular traditions of the existing building stock.

It was generally accepted that maintaining existing buildings was a greener alternative to new build and it was important to look after the simply useful as well as the significant.

As for training, James said courses today might be admirable for teaching people how to work on new build but were “utterly useless” when it came to traditional building. He called for a return to traditional apprenticeships.

The full proceedings of the symposium were recorded and will eventually be available to be downloaded free from the BGS website.

Further information

The British Geological Survey has a ‘Building a Future for Stone’ blog up and running (you can find it at http://stonesymposium.blogspot.com) where they are currently posting news items related to the stone industry. It is being up-dated about once a week.
Notice of the release of the speakers’ presentations at the ‘Building a Future for Stone’ symposium will be posted there. An announcement will also be made when the symposium’s ‘Outcomes’ document has been produced.
Both the speakers’ presentations and the Outcomes document will be available to be downloaded free from a new section on the BGS website that should be available shortly. The address is: www.bgs.ac.uk/buildingstones