The largest survey ever undertaken to map the occurance, historic use and current availability of building stones in England, along with at least some of the significant buildings constructed of those stones, should get under way this month (September).
Protracted negotiations between English Heritage, which is heading the Strategic Stone Study, and the British Geological Survey (BGS), who will correlate the information and present it on a Geographical Information System (GIS) map that will eventually be freely accessible on the internet, seemed to have finally reached agreement at the beginning of September. Although the contract had still to be signed as we went to press, all sides felt it would be any day.
English Heritage had hoped that the contracts would be signed before the end of last year, but with lawyers and IT people involved as well as the conservationists of English Heritage and the geologists of BGS, even developing a common language could not have been easy.
It was, however, hoped that a meeting of the English Stone Forum on 12 September would start to see some movement on the actual project rather than just the contracts.
English Heritage have declined to say how much they anticipate spending on the project, although one disgruntled participant complained to NSS that half the budget had been spent just getting the contract sorted out.
The methodology for the Strategic Stone Study now to be undertaken was developed from a pilot survey carried out in the Midlands in 2005.
Chris Wood, Senior Architectural Conservator of the Building Conservation & Research Team of English Heritage, told NSS that they had learnt from the pilot that a lot of the information required was already known locally. The forthcoming national study would in many cases be a question of gathering it together.
The pilot Strategic Stone Study (the results of which Chris Wood reported on in the June 2006 issue of Natural Stone Specialist magazine) had two strands. One used professional consultants and one largely local volunteers.
It quickly became apparent that the time taken to survey areas put the use of professionals out of the question on the grounds of cost. And, in any case, members of local geological societies often had a lot of the information in their heads and were enthusiastic about participating in the study.
For the current survey, the country has been divided into 45 areas that roughly correspond to the counties, although some with extensive stone resources are broken up into smaller areas. English Heritage has so far met with two or three representatives of geological organisations in three counties - Dorset, Warwickshire and Derby - that will probably start the study (although, again, contracts have yet to be signed).
They will be responsible for gathering the information together from their members while Terry Hughes of the Stone Roofing Association and a consultant to English Heritage will co-ordinate their programmes.
It is anticipated that it will take each area about six months to complete their surveys. As the programme rolls out more areas will be involved and the whole exercise is expected to take about four years to complete.
The BGS believe they will start getting the first results up on their website before Christmas this year. There will be a GIS map devoted to the Strategic Stone Study on the website www.bgs.ac.uk/mineralsuk.
The Strategic Stone Study is a response to the Symonds Report on the stone industry Planning for the Supply of Natural Building and Roofing Stone in England & Wales published in 2003.
If you have a quarry on your land, or know of a quarry site that you suspect few will be aware of, or have specific knowledge about the sources and uses of stone, or have other information that could be of use in the Strategic Stone Study, Terry Hughes would be delighted to hear from you and asks you to email him in the first instance at terry@slateroof.co.uk.