I feel moved to respond to Robert Merry’s column of last month, in which he bravely urges your readers to support the welcoming of skilled labour from overseas into our domestic stone industry.

It is a courageous view to share in stone circles and he is to be commended for it. My experience has shown me that British construction workers (of various trades, including stonemasonry) are on the whole much more resistant to the arrival of migrant labour than the nation at large. This is a problem which industry leaders must solve with sensitivity.

I share with Robert Merry the view that, far from ‘taking our jobs’ migrant labour creates net growth in our industry from which we all ultimately benefit.

Stonemasonry has, since its earliest days, always been an industry where workers have followed jobs across international borders (think of Norman masons from present-day France building Britain’s earliest cathedrals and castles right up to today and the French and German masons who have been working on York Minster) and the liberty for masons to pursue work internationally must be one of the most significant factors behind the creation of Europe’s most prestigious built heritage.

None of the cathedrals in Britain or the rest of Europe, for example, could have been designed and built so magnificently in isolation without continuous access to the workforces and the shared skills and knowledge of stonemasons from neighbouring nations. It is no different in our day and we must not shut ourselves out.

Alex Wenham.

Alex Wenham is a prizewinning British stone carver based in Oxford.