The nine cathedral masonry workshops in England are meeting in March with the intention of forming a Cathedral Workshop Fellowship that will play an important part in teaching craft skills for the benefit of whole of the heritage sector.

It will also enable the workshops to speak with a single voice when they are talking to organisations such as English Heritage and CITB-ConstructionSkills. The move to work closely together, including exchanging apprentices to give them a broader education and supplement their college work, has been instigated by Gloucester Cathedral, who hosted a preliminary meeting suggesting the idea of the Fellowship in May last year.

Peter Edds, head of buildings and estate at Salisbury Cathedral, wrote a draft paper examining the feasibility and practicality of such a scheme and the cathedral workshops met again in October at Lincoln Cathedral to discuss the paper. All nine clerks of works supported the idea. The next meeting, in March at York Minster, should set the ball rolling, with an initial one week training seminar intended to be held for all the cathedrals\' apprentices at Gloucester in the autumn this year.