John Baskerville, a heritage craftsman and site manager with leading stone and conservation specialists Linford-Bridgeman in Lichfield, Staffordshire, has received the first ever Queen Mother Memorial Medal. It was presented by the Duke of Gloucester at a ceremony in the Museum of Garden History in London last month (November).

The award was created by the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) to recognise outstanding and conspicuous contributions to heritage crafts.

John Baskerville is 59 and has been a leading light in restoration crafts for many years. It was while working on a project for the National Trust at Canons Ashby House in Northampton-shire in the mid 1980s that he first suggested to SPAB they should be looking to ensure the next generation of craftsmen was being properly trained. These comments led directly to the establishment in 1986 of SPAB\'s William Morris Craft Fellowship, an advanced training scheme for qualified building craftsmen and women to further their knowledge of their crafts.

On the same night as John Baskerville was presented with his medal, three stonemasons became the latest recipients of the coveted William Morris Craft Fellowship certificates - Andrew Allan, Charles Jones and Ulrike Wahl.