With four major stone festivals held in the UK this year and a lot of stone to be seen in construction and conservation awards, there have been plenty of winners in the stone industry this year. NSS takes a look at some of the highlights of 2013 that have provided them.

Stone got a lot of public airing this year. As well as the Natural Stone Show at ExCeL London (30 April-2 May), there were four major stone festivals, including the European Stone Festival that came to the UK this year. Then there were four of the six finalists in the RIBA Stirling Prize that were major stone projects and, almost inevitably, many of the finalists in the English Heritage Angel Awards included various elements of stonework. Even perennial attractions such as Chelsea Flower Show had more natural stone than ever on display this year.

While there is a commercial element to some of these events with individual companies wanting to benefit from them, there is also a benefit to the industry in general of simply raising the profile of stone, the impact of which should not be underestimated. Just think how much concrete as blocks, pavers and walling there used to be at Chelsea (albeit that some of it was called stone). These days concrete is undoubtedly the poor relation of natural stone in hard landscaping – as in so many other areas of construction.

The Natural Stone Show in London is one of the main ways the stone industry gets its message out to construction clients and professionals.

The Show has always attracted a good mixture of the stone industry and its customers, but this year provided a special focus by themeing each of the three days of the event and its associated Natural Stone & Building Conservation Conference.

The first day of the exhibition was Architect & Designer Day, the second day was the Stone Industry Day and the final day was devoted to Conservation.

The Architect & Designer Day was particularly successful, with well over 100 construction industry professionals turning up to listen to the presentations at the conference hosted by international stone consultant Vince Marazita from California and to tour the Show. They were also treated to lunch at Zero Sette by Fila, the Italian manufacturer of chemical treatments for stone. No doubt they, like all the visitors to the Show, were left with an enhanced impression of the stone industry.

There was probably less conscious awareness of the stone in the gardens in Chelsea by the 150,000 or so visitors to the centenary Flower Show this year (21-25 May) but no doubt it will have left an indelible mark on their collective unconscious.

Awards schemes have the same effect. It can hardly go unnoticed by developers, builders, architects, designers, conservators or clients that so many winning projects these days incorporate natural stone as the material of choice when quality matters.

It is not surprising that stone features heavily in conservation award schemes such as the English Heritage Angel Awards, presented once again at the London West End Palace Theatre (21 October), where the work of PAYE Stonework & Restoration, Clivedon Conservation and William Anelay, among others, was praised. It is less certain that there will always be stone in the projects honoured in RIBA’s Stirling Prize, but there was plenty of it there, too, this year, both in the winning project and in three of the five projects short-listed.

It was the York and Manchester stone and conservation company William Anelay project at Astley Castle, carried out under the direction of architect Witherford Watson Mann, that won. It involved building a new holiday home inside the 12th century stone ruins of the castle, renovating the original walls and incorporating them as part of the development.

The other short-listed projects using stone were: Bishops Edward King Chapel at Rippon Theological College in Cuddesdon, Oxfordshire (Clipsham limestone); the new Giant’s Causeway Visitor Centre in Northern Ireland (Basalt); the Graduate Entry Medical School building at Limerick University (Irish Blue limestone). The other two short-listed projects were housing.

This year also saw an unusually large number of stone festivals – and there were some smaller events as well as the four major festivals. The first was the Gloucester Stone Festival (25-27 May) that was organised by stonecarver Carrie Horwood, who has been a regular at other towns’ festivals for several years. The event intentionally coincided with the Tall Ships Festival to add to the attractions for that weekend and had a nautical theme for the carvings.

Then came the Bristol Festival of Stone (31 May-9 June), instigated by architect Mike Richards, who lives in the city. It evolved from him seeing the performance stone carver Laurent Donnadieu while on holiday in France – and if you wonder what performance stone carving is, take a look at bit.ly/1bg8UP7 (it is worth watching the vide, honest).

Mike invited Laurent to perform in Bristol and the project expanded to include a festival of stone carving with enthusiasts and professionals from all over the UK and abroad competing. Before the event, Mike had said he would like to make it a regular in the city. Afterwards he said it had been a lot of work and he was not so sure.

During the Festival, professional carver Ben Dearnley carved a giant bust representing James Starley, designer of the penny-farthing and generally credited with having started the bicycle industry. It represented James Starley rather than being a precise likeness because Ben Dearnley said it was not possible to produce such a large bust accurately in the time available during the Festival of Stone.

Afterwards, the Bathstone carving (the stone was kindly donated by Bath Stone Group) was positioned on the Sustrans cycle route through Bristol’s Ashton Court Park.

So to the European Stone Festival (22 & 23 June), which this year was held in the UK at Lincoln, where it was hosted by the Cathedral stonemasons in the grounds of the Cathedral.

The European Stone Festival was instigated by Freiburg Technical College for Stonemasonry & Stonecarving in Germany in 1999. After that, like the journeymen masons from Freiburg, it travelled around Europe, with different cities vying for the privilege of hosting it each year. The only time it had previously been in the UK was in 2003, when it was hosted by Canterbury Cathedral.

In Lincoln, Carol Heidschuster, Works Manager at Lincoln Cathedral, and Sally Oliver, Works Co-ordinator, ran it in conjunction with A Thousand Years of Traditional Crafts at Lincoln Castle, which faces the Cathedral on the top of Steep Hill in the city. A Traditional Food Fair on the pavement between the two buildings run by the Rotary Club made sure the thousands of visitors to the events did not go hungry.

As usual, the carvings produced during the weekend were auctioned off at the end to help cover the costs of accommodating and feeding the 134 competitors from 12 countries that took part.

More than 600 people turned up for the auction, which raised more than £50,000. The top price paid for one of the carvings was £2,600. It was for apprentice Tom Webster’s carving of an anvil.

The final major Stone Festival was at Barnard Castle in County Durham (21-29 September). It was the second such event run at the Bowes Museum by the Vernacular Architecture Revival initiative with funding from the National Lottery supplied through Durham County Council’s Heart of Teesdale Landscape Partnership. The funding has now come to an end, which might mean the festival has also come to an end. Katherine Banner, one of the organisers, was not sure after this year’s event.

The funding required the inclusion of an element of education, which is what the Festival was designed to provide. And it did. It took a different format to the other festivals. It did not invite allcomers to attend and compete but had skilled stoneworkers demonstrating their art, including sculptor Louise Plant. She often produces rounded, abstract sculpture but said the Catcastle stone she was given to work had inspired her to create something more architectural and angular, with cavities like the door and window openings of buildings.

The event included a series of seminars to discuss topics such as the commissioning of public art.

More than 6,000 people attended the event at Barnard Castle. The other main festivals also attracted thousands of people. At each one there were those who expressed surprise that the craft and art of working stone was still so prevalent.

And, of course, as well as the people who attended the events, there will have been thousands of others who read about them and saw pictures of the work through the local press and TV coverage. And the people who have seen it will talk to others.

It is always difficult to quantify the benefits of heightened awareness by a population, but benefits there certainly are.

The growth in the use of granite for worktops from the 1990s onwards and, in the same period, for hard landscaping is testament to how an idea spreads.

As Barry Hunt, the author of the Building With Stone series that has been running in this magazine this year, said in his introduction to the series: “Everyone enjoys stone, although not everyone is aware of it. It represents safety; protection; home.”

Certainly since 2008 stone companies have suffered along with most other businesses. With housebuilding down by about 35% it has been inevitable that companies supplying interiors and walling to the sector have suffered. A substantial number of companies that were making granite and quartz worktops have failed. The refurbishment market has been good for some but it cannot compensate for around 80,000 fewer houses being built a year now than in 2007.

Many traditional masonry companies were less exposed to debt than worktop companies, which helped them survive the credit crunch and the sudden withdrawal of overdrafts and loans that shocked many companies in 2009. However, they are still suffering from lengthening payment terms and severe price competition, respectively hitting cash flow and margins.

Some of the UK’s quarry companies report that they have not suffered as badly as they might have done, thanks to an international echelon of the wealthy who want to live and work in the UK and like to build using British stone.

There are no independently collected figures to support the anecdotal evidence of stone suppliers, but traditional masonry companies with good reputations who work and fix the stone do also seem to be surviving relatively well. As they point out, they do not need many large projects to keep them busy, especially as most of them employ fewer people now than they did in 2008.

As 2013 comes to a close, some of the general economic indicators offer hope for the year ahead. With the election date fixed for May 2015 and the Government now talking about an increase of infrastructure spending, which should grow the economy, 2014 has the potential to be a better year. So fingers crossed that the winter this year is shorter than last year’s and we can get on with it.