For Sean Collins, the Managing Director of Boden & Ward, stonemasonry is not just a question of craftsmanship, it is about a whole philosophy, as he explained to NSS.
The showroom at Northampton masons Boden & Ward is a tribute to the craft of stonemasonry rather than a display of products. Traditional tools of stonemasons are on show and poems and quotes cut into stone in attractive lettering on the walls give the observer an idea of the philosophy encompassed in the craft.
On one wall three different styles of cantilevered staircase protrude, serving both as a display of elegant masonry and as a way for customers to choose the style they want. On the floor lies a template currently being used to make a cantilevered staircase for a customer, only coincidentally part of the display.
There are photographs showing work in progress as well as finished projects, telling a story. All the photographs show the work of Boden & Ward, juxtaposed with the historic displays, emphasising the continuity of traditions stretching back into antiquity.
On another wall are hung Award plaques that Boden & Ward have won for their work.
The showroom itself, which is part of Boden & Ward’s workshops and offices, is in a rural setting on the edge of a village called Flore, itself reminiscent of a bygone age.
And yet for all the company’s respect for the traditions of the craft – Managing Director Sean Collins still makes the apprentices work everything by hand for their first year in order that they should get their mason’s eye – Boden & Ward are firmly rooted in the present.
They may be based in an idyllic setting, but it is only a few minutes from the M1 and an hour or so outside London. In the factory is a Gilbert 1500 wire saw and two Pedrini 940s with 1100mm blades, which they use not only to saw stone for their own projects, many of significant historic properties, but also to supply stone for other companies.
They have an effective website that emphasises the craft element of their trade because that is just what the wealthy landowners who approach them through it for cantilevered staircases, extensions, restoration work and complete new builds want to see.
And it is paying off. Boden & Ward have grown a lot since the company was set up by Brian Boden & Ian Ward 25 years ago.
To celebrate that anniversary, Boden & Ward held an open day in July and were visited by about 80 architects, clients, church wardens, estate managers and others. “It was a great afternoon,” says Alex Ward. “Then we had a pig roast and booze up in the evening for about 100 staff and families and some sub-contractors who we have worked with for many years.”
Alex had been there at the outset of the business looking after the books and she returned to it in 1999 when she and Sean Collins took it over. Ian Ward had gone down to the West Country by then and Brian Boden, a mason, wanted to go back to his trade, where he felt most comfortable, rather than run a business.
Sean Collins, then the workshop foreman who had joined the company five years earlier, and Alex took over the business and since then it has grown every year. Two years ago they moved into a larger unit that became available on the site they occupy, which gave them bigger offices and the showroom.
Two years before that they had bought the Gilbert wire saw to replace a second hand Italian monoblock they had bought because processing their own block was less expensive and meant they could get the stone quicker. Sean likes the speed of the wire saw – it cuts more than three times faster than the monoblock – but misses the accuracy.
At the same time they replaced a manual ASM bridge saw with their first computer controlled Pedrini. On its own, the Pedrini led to a bottleneck, so they bought a second. They can both be programmed directly from production manager Willy Drouet’s computer, which has given them the capacity to saw for other companies as well as for their own projects. These days, making cills, door hoods and other masonry for other companies accounts for a fair proportion of their business.
Along with the machinery, the number of masons employed has also grown until they currently have 23 people working there, including eight of the 11 apprentices they have trained in the past five years.
After years of paying their levy to CITB, when Boden & Ward first started training they found it difficult to get grants to send the youngsters to Bath College (these days they go to the nearer Moulton College).
“I was livid,” says Alex. In the end their MP intervened and they got the grants. They also aim to have all their staff with CSCS cards because they expect the masons to be able to work on site as well as on the banker.
Sean served his own apprenticeship with much respected London masons Bysouths, who were a casualty of the building lull in the first half of the 1990s. It was when he was left without a job with the Bysouth closure in 1994 that he visited Boden & Ward, who were looking for a banker mason. Sean doubted he would want to go to Northampton but went up for a chat one Saturday anyway.
“It was all hand tools. They weren’t even using cutters and didn’t have a compressor. I thought: yes, I’ll have some of this – even though I had a 70 mile journey each way every day and they worked 7.30-to-5.30.”
It was at his instigation that power tools and saws were introduced. The resulting increased productivity has enabled them to become suppliers to other companies and has changed the way they look at the workshop: from a necessary cost to a profitable part of the business in its own right.
Boden & Ward prefer to employ people directly, although they do use subbies occasionally. “When you employ people you have the skills in-house and can take on jobs with confidence without running round to see who can do them,” says Sean.
Key members of staff include Moira Morris, a stone carver recruited last year as contracts manager; Willy Drouet, the production manager who is also a director of the company and joined Boden & Ward from Lincoln Cathedral; and (strangely) Shaun Collins, who is workshop foreman.
Everyone in the company apart from Alex Ward is capable of working stone and gets stuck in on the banker if it is necessary. Sean (not Shaun) Collins says he prefers working stone on the banker to the paperwork on his desk.
A new workshop for the masons is next on the agenda. The masons currently work on bankers in an open sided shed and Sean wants to move them inside, which means installing dust extraction.
Boden & Ward have not had any trouble keeping their growing workforce busy so far and while Sean accepts the outlook for the year ahead is uncertain, they still have as much work on the books as usual – which is about eight months’ worth.
“I think for everyone over the next year or so it will be a case of battening down, making sure we get paid and, even more importantly, making sure the work is right so no-one has a reason to withhold payment,” says Sean.
“The reason Boden & Ward have done so well is because we have a well-known and respected name in a trade where it takes time to get established. We’ve earnt that reputation by concentrating on quality rather than profit.
“A lot of people who contact us say we have been recommended to them. If we do a job for an architect we will always be on the tender list next time and if it’s a private client they will come to us directly again.
“There’s a reason for that: we’re not contractual. It’s how we want to conduct ourselves as a company. We want to leave work at night feeling good, not feeling we have twisted someone.”
Like any masonry company, a fair proportion of Boden & Ward’s work is local, but their reputation goes before them and they have worked as far away as Orkney, off the north coast of Scotland, and at Stirling Castle, where Stirling Stone were the main contractors. There, carving work was put out to a separate tender by Historic Scotland and Boden & Ward won the contract. In Orkney they replaced windows at St Magnus Cathedral, bringing the local stone blocks back to Northampton to work.
As Sean says: “You need jobs like that – interesting jobs. Not just for the company to up its profile, but for the guys.
“The beauty of stonemasonry is the diversity of it – you never know what it’s going to be next.
“It’s a satisfying job at many levels. But it has to be taught right in order to get that passion into your work – because it’s a long day of work if you’re not happy with it.
“Everything’s so instant in this day and age. Masons have to learn patience. That’s why our apprentices aren’t allowed to touch power tools in their first year. When they finally get to use an angle grinder and a spinner it’s just another tool to get them to where they need to be. Companies are only as good as the masons working for them.”