As the National Funeral Exhibition, now being held every other year, was staged at Stoneleigh Park, Coventry, this month (June), NSS takes the opportunity to look at developments in the sector and at some of what was on show at Stoneleigh.

The internecine wars of the death care sector of the stone industry seem to have reached a truce – or at least a ceasefire – since the Ministry of Justice issued its new guidelines to burial authorities in 2009 telling them to stop the wholesale toppling of memorials.

It began the end of more than a decade of concern in the memorial sector about the safe fixing of memorials, during which there have been questions asked in Parliament and a Parliamentary Select Committee set up to look into the memorial industry.

NAMM’s response to safety concerns was to develop their Code of Working Practice, produce their own fixing system and establish an independent British Register of Accredited Memorial Masons (BRAMM) that would train, assess and register memorial masons who could fix memorials safely.

NAMM members ended up complaining that the BRAMM registration requirements were too onerous and too expensive, so, at the end of 2009, NAMM set up its alternative Register of Qualified Memorial Fixers (RQMF), having first gained City & Guilds accreditation for training and qualifications for fixing memorials through NAMM. As a result, NAMM has this year been in dispute with one burial authority, Cardiff, which refused to accept RQMF accreditation as an acceptable alternative to BRAMM registration in its cemeteries.

NAMM called for a judicial review and in March a judge ruled that the way the council had reached its decision was flawed and it should form an independent committee to review the decision. That has yet to be done.

NAMM’s point is that it is perfectly legitimate for there to be two registers and, in fact, it is beneficial to masons to have a choice, but burial authorities have to accept both, so they can both operate on an equal footing.

There is a British standard for fixing memorials – BS8415 – which is currently going through a major review. Much of the standard is drawn from NAMM’s Code of Working Practice, but one aspect of the Standard that NAMM are trying get changed is the reduction of the force which a memorial needs to withstand in order to be considered safe. It is currently set at 35kg, but NAMM say that is effectively destructive testing and have proposed that the force a normal lawn memorial should be required to resist should be reduced to 25kg.

When the new Ministry of Justice guidelines were issued, Ian Gostling (sadly recently deceased – see the News pages), who was then the Chief Executive Officer, said common sense was prevailing. He said: “I’m pleased, because it has taken a long, long time to get to this point.”

One point on which almost everyone agrees is that all the concern over safety has meant memorials are now generally fixed securely – in spite of the occasional story of some cowboy practices persisting, particularly by those who refuse to join one or other of the registers.

Issues regarding the safety of memorials became a plank of the MAB campaign in the early 1990s. MAB, which now stands for the Memorial Awarenesss Board, was established by NAMM as a public relations campaign to promote memorialisation. It still exists and is funded by a voluntary levy charged on memorials by some of the industry’s wholesalers. It is chaired by Graeme Robertson of memorial wholesalers A&J Robertson (Granite) based in Aberdeen.

The MAB campaign is run by Mike Dewar’s PR company One but is not currently as active as it has been. Last year its major activity was a consumer photographic competition requiring entrants to submit photographs of an old and a new memorial. It was considered a success both in terms of entries and publicity opportunities and is to be repeated this year.

The Cemetery of the Year Competition that MAB has run for many years was dropped last year when it lost its sponsorship. It is not being revived again this year. Graeme Robertson says: “We still think it’s a good way of promoting memorials to burial sites but it’s not always appreciated by the memorial masons.”

Most of MAB’s income is currently being spent on developing a new website. MAB already has a website but it has not been kept up-to-date because all the effort is going into developing the new site. Graeme: “We have to move with the times.”

Robertsons were the last of the major wholesalers to give into the financial imperative to import finished memorials from the Far East. Today, they still make about 30% of their memorials in Aberdeen but the rest come from India.

Perhaps the lower price of Far Eastern imports, in spite of the exchange rate putting prices up, has helped the memorial sector ride the recession better than many. People die in a recession as at any other time and the 30% or so of the bereaved who want a burial for the deceased rather than a cremation remains fairly constant, although how much they spend on a memorial might vary.

Nevertheless, Robertson’s Managing Director says they did see a dip in demand last year and anecdotally from their own chain of retail memorial masons and from other memorial masons they supply, there were areas that saw a greater fall in sales than others – notably the Midlands in England.

Unlike funerals, VAT is charged on memorials at the standard rate, but Graeme does not believe the rise in VAT to 20% in January had anything other than a temporary impact, possibly moving a few sales forward to beat the rise, although he says sales in December were poor, as they had been in January last year, because the severe weather meant customers could not get out.

Robertsons have closed two of their branches this year but are still busier than they were last year. “We’re optimistic,” says Graeme.

Another of main wholesalers are George Willcox (Granite). Managing Director John Linley says last year was the first time in 35 years in business that they did not see an increase in turnover. “It was only a couple of percent down, but it was a bit of blow.”

He says trade has been better since then and he is now happy with the way business is progressing. “I’m optimistic,” he says, adding that in spite of the fall in turnover last year they managed to improve profits without any redundancies.

Most of the extra efficiencies came from improving the way they handle currency. In 2008, the exchange rate fluctuations had added 30% to their material costs. And it is not only exchange rates. John says his Chinese suppliers have recently given their workers a 20% pay increase and are still finding it hard to recruit people – apparently in China, as in Europe, they prefer to sit in front of computers.

But computers are also bringing in business. At the previous National Funeral Exhibition in 2009 Willcox launched their new website where trade customers (only) can place their orders. The number of orders coming from the site is growing all the time and Willcox are planning more improvements to their web presence. “It’s a revolution, really,” says John.

Both Robertsons and Willcox exhibited at the NFE in 2009 but were not back this year, begging questions about there being enough changes in memorials, or enough interest from retail memorial masons, to warrant an exhibition even every other year.

Odlings, the wholesalers from Hull, were back with an impressive stand the backdrop to which was a churchyard drawn in pastels by the company’s Creative Supervisor, Alan Clough, who also won most of the prizes in the NAMM Craftex competition. They had a new catalogue that brings all their memorial designs together in one attractive brochure. It includes a new range of churchyard memorials, some in English stones such as Yorkstone and Portland. In the brochure they are flagged up with the Union Jack to show their origin.

Phoenix, wholesalers from Wimbourne in Dorset, also showed a memorial in British Yorkstone, as well as a new offering in hand painted decoration, added after sandblasting the design on to the stone. Kevin Tyler, on the stand with his newly appointed salesman, Stuart Hughes, said the design on the stand had taken six hours to paint, which would add about £250to the price of the memorial.

Strongs Memorials from Walsall were also back at NFE showing their support for the Forces Children’s Trust that helps the children of soldiers killed in action. As well as impressive new designs, they showed a new quartzite from Australia. Their stand was judged Best in Show among the memorial exhibitors.

War hero commemorated

A lone Spitfire flying low over Waterloo Place in London dipped its wings to salute the unveiling of a memorial to Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park, the formerly unsung hero who commanded the squadrons that defended the South East of England during the Summer of 1940.

Set on an inscribed plinth of Cornish DeLank granite within the 19^th century cast iron railings of Waterloo Gardens, the 2.7m high bronze statue by sculptor Les Johnson shows the New Zealander in full flying gear, drawing on his gloves in readiness for action and facing east, the direction from which the Luftwaffe attacked London. The site, next to the Athenaeum and in the shadow of New Zealand House, was suggested by Westminster City Council’s Commissioner for Transportation, Martin Low, with the aim of completing the symmetrical arrangement set by the five other statues on either side of Waterloo Place.

These statues all have granite bases, so granite was the logical choice for the new plinth and the DeLank Quarry at St Breward, Bodmin, Cornwall, the obvious suppliers, as the architects, Donald Insall Associates, had worked with them before on The Battle of Britain Monument. DeLank, with their well-equipped granite processing workshops, had cut down and reshaped the 19^th century granite structure that they reformed to create The Battle of Britain Monument on London’s Victoria Embankment. It was the accuracy of their sawing that was to prove so useful on the plinth for the memorial to Sir Keith Park.

The problem was that the site, directly opposite the granite plinth of the memorial to Robert Falcon Scott, was a garden terrace planting bed along the south side of the Athenaeum, with one of the basement rooms extending beneath it, limiting the weight of the plinth that could go above. The solution was to use thin granite wrapped around a lightweight core.

Part of the monumental character of the existing granite statue plinths in Waterloo Place comes from the size of the granite blocks used to construct them. In order to avoid the joints of the stonework on the side elevations of the new plinth revealing the thin skin of granite used, the corner stones were cut L shaped in plan, so on the elevations the stones appeared appropriately monumental in scale.

The void inside the hollow plinth is ventilated through a hole on the garden elevation, covered with a circular bronze plaque with a Kiwi in relief (pictured above), the circular recess for the bronze plaque being combined with the narrow vertical channel incorporated to take the run-off from the bronze statue above.

The main contractors were West One and the stone specialists who fixed the granite were PAYE Stonework and Restoration Ltd. The statue was unveiled in September last year, on the 70th Anniversary of the climax of the Battle of Britain.