This year’s Stirling Prize, one of architecture’s highest awards, has gone to Astley Castle, a stone project where specialist stone and conservation company William Anelay added a new-build within the walls of the ruins of a Castle that was once the home of Lady Jane Grey.

Three of the five other projects on the short-list for the Award also showed some of the stone industry’s finest work. They were the Clipsham limestone Bishops Edward King Chapel at Ripon Theological College in Cuddesdon, Oxfordshire; the basalt Giant’s Causway visitor centre in Northern Ireland; and the Irish Blue limestone Graduate Entry Medical School at Limerick University in Ireland.

The Astley Castle project was featured in Natural Stone Specialist magazine while the work was in progress in July 2011 and there is more about it in this month's issue of the magazine. Giant’s Causeway visitor centre was featured in the August issue of Natural Stone Specialist last year and the other two projects will be reviewed in the coming months.