The BBC’s Look North regional news programme was on hand to record the members of the Women’s International Stone Alliance (WISA) as they constructed a monument at Shibden Hall Estate in Halifax to celebrate the life of Anne Lister.

Anne Lister was the early 19th century diarist, industrialist and landowner whose life inspired the global hit BBC/HBO TV series, Gentleman Jack, much of which was recorded at Shibden Hall and park.

Women stoneworkers from the UK, Australia, Italy, Ireland and the USA finished constructing their dry stone walling monument with carved monoliths, which include inscriptions from Anne Lister’s diaries, this month (September).

It is built from 10 tonnes of building stone for the dry stone walls donated by Simon Lumb, a dry stone waller and carver from Halifax, plus another 10 tonnes of stone for three monoliths, coping stones and carving stone donated by Wakefield-based natural stone supplier Traditional Stone.

Traditional Stone employs five women, and one of them, Emma Hudson, the company’s General Manager, said: “This is a tremendous project to be involved with and we are delighted to donate the raw materials that the WISA team need to create this unique monument.

“It is so important to encourage women and girls to get into the natural stone trades and hopefully more will be inspired to explore a career path and seek training in our sector when they see the skill and creativity on show at Shibden Hall.”

Calderdale Council added its support by transporting the stone to Shibden Hall and preparing the site for the work.

During the building of the monument, WISA also held stone carving and dry stone walling workshops for women at Shibden Hall. The first was on the weekend of 20-21 August and proved so over-subscribed for the walling that another was held on 3-4 September.

WISA is an international network of women keen to work with and support other women involved or interested in traditional stone trades.

WISA member Emma Knowles headed the project and the workshops. Emma comes from Yorkshire originally and is a member of the Dry Stone Walling Association (DSWA) headquartered in Cumbria, although she now lives in Australia where she runs a company called Stone of Arc.

WISA has been working with dry stone walling Master Craftsman and accomplished designer David Griffiths to create a portfolio of edifices incorporating intimate spaces that challenge perspectives and celebrate the strengths and capabilities of women in a culturally specific way.

These edifices are being built around the world by WISA teams, initially in England, Australia, Ireland, the USA and Italy. As Emma Knowles says in a contribution to the DSWA Waller & Dyker magazine, this will give women a rare opportunity to travel and work with other women within the traditional stone trades.

The monument to Anne Lister, which creates a communal area for the public, is one of the edifices.

Antony Harris at Traditional Stone says: “With the dimensional natural stone industry being male dominated for centuries, Gentleman Jack being a great BBC success worldwide and our Lionesses winning the European Cup, I don’t think the timing could be any better.”

Emma Knowles said: “There are so few women working in the stone industry and this is why we want to do everything we can to encourage more to get involved and support them through our network.

“We are thrilled to have been invited to create the new monument at Shibden Hall to celebrate Anne Lister, who wasn’t afraid to challenge convention and show that women can excel in male-dominated professions.

“And a big thank you to David Griffiths, Calderdale Council, Simon Lumb and Traditional Stone – without their support we would never have been able to build this unique monument.”

Natural Stone Surfaces, based in Chapel-en-le-Frith in Derbyshire, has taken over Greg Ashfield’s business of Grantech Ltd in Flintshire, in north Wales. Greg is leaving the company. 

Natural Stone Surfaces is integrating Grantec into its way of working, introducing new systems and processes and investing in its 1,700m2 site, including updating the machinery.

One of the first machines to move to Grantech will be a waterjet that has been made redundant at Natural Stone Surfaces by the company’s three Robo Saw Jets and a Breton Combicut.

One of the first changes visitors to Grantech are already seeing is the renovation of the exterior of the premises, enabling the company to carry a more varied stock line for customers. Inside, Grantech already has an impressive showroom.

The Grantech team will be managed day-to-day by Georgie Beeley. During her time with Natural Stone Surfaces Georgie has amassed a wealth of knowledge and experience and will integrate Grantech into the Natural Stone Surfaces way of working, which includes the Moraware management software.

Natural Stone Surfaces Director Dave Roy says Grantech has had annual sales of £2.5million, which is three-to-four kitchens a day. He expects to be able to increase that fairly quickly to 10 kitchens a day.

Rumour has it that Natural Stone Surfaces is also in the process of buying another stone fabricator, although Dave Roy declines to comment about that.

naturalstonesurfaces.co.uk

The 11m long post-tensioned beam of Portland limestone and reclaimed granite hung from a wooden frame at the Royal Academy during its summer exhibition (read more about that here) has won the CDUK Award for Architecture.

The beam is the work of engineers Webb Yates Engineers and stonemasons The Stonemasonry Company. It was given the name Equanimity.

The judging committee awarded the £5,000 prize for the work that best demonstrates the capacity of architecture to signal hope, selecting the entry for illustrating the structural potential of materials (namely natural stone and wood) with minimal embodied carbon.

Niall McLaughlin RA, Chair of Judges, said: “Equanimity by Webb Yates appeals on conceptual, figurative, tectonic, and emotional levels. It has a beautiful Leonardo da Vinci quality and shows you can do something sophisticated with a material that’s been around for years.

“It directly addresses the curators’ theme, and it has a powerful presence in the space. I have rarely been made so aware of the structural miracle of holding tonnes of stone high up in the air. These engineers and masons are designers who can rival any architect.”

Intended to promote the use of both stone and timber as natural, low embodied carbon materials, Equanimity has an embodied carbon footprint of just 0.25tonnes, much of which must be attributed to the steel holding it in compression.

The beam is designed to demonstrate the structural integrity that is achievable with stone and timber and show that the materials are not just decorative.

On a higher plane, the beam balancing under the trestle represents the importance of living in balance with nature.

Steve Webb, Director, Webb Yates Engineers, said: “We were delighted to be invited to exhibit our piece at the RA and even more delighted to get this award. I love how it sits with Marina Tabassum’s flood shelter. Both are stilted, triangulated structures. One pointing up: one pointing down. While we continue to believe that we can limit climate change by using low energy materials, she deals with today’s reality, lifting desperate people out of the flood waters.

“The conception of the beam was a combination of engineering design and craft knowledge. Allowing the pragmatic and the scientific to rule in the design is what has led us to make such a rarified and arresting object with a real prospect for the future. Thanks to the curators, the RA and, of course, The Stonemasonry Company, Albion Stone, Artisteel and Xylotek for making it possible."

Andy Noble, Managing Director of CDUK, supporter of the Royal Academy of Arts 2022 Architecture Programme, said: “This is the first year that CDUK is supporting the RA Award for Architecture and awarding the prize to Webb Yates’ stone beam seemed the natural choice.

“Equanimity can’t fail to capture people’s attention upon entering the Summer Exhibition’s Architecture room. The piece brilliantly reveals the architectural feats that are possible using often overlooked materials and captures the necessity of moving beyond traditional material choices to minimise environmental impact. Equanimity is an illustration of the future that creative design and material choices can deliver.”

Because everything in the Summer Exhibition has to be for sale, Equanimity carried a price of £30,000.

The Summer Exhibition closed on 21 August but there are plans to display the beam at the Oxo Building in London and after that in New York. It can be moved relatively simply by unthreading the steel tensioners and taking it apart.

Those from the stone industry who watched The Open at St Andrews in Fife in July might have had their attention momentarily distracted from the golf by the new Peakmoor sandstone extension to Rusacks Hotel in the background. The rainscreen cladding is from Stone Cladding Systems, established in 2016 by Jason Kennedy and already making quite a name for itself as a natural stone rainscreen specialist.

St Andrews describes itself as the home of golf, with the game having been played there for 600 years. This year the Old Course at St Andrews was the setting for the 150th Open Championship. It was the 30th time The Open had been played there – more times than at any other venue.

Overlooking the Old Course is Rusacks Hotel, which this year was sporting a new extension clad in Peakmoor sandstone, as the keen eyed from the stone industry might have noticed because the hotel appeared in the background time and again during the TV coverage.

Anyone privileged enough to be watching The Open from the rooftop bar (called One Under Bar) will have had a closer view of the stone cladding, supplied as part of the Aztec rainscreen cladding from Stone Cladding Systems based in Ashbourne, Derbyshire.

It is an indication of how Stone Cladding Systems’ reputation is spreading out from its home turf that it was chosen for the hotel at St Andrews in Fife, Scotland – although since Jason Kennedy formed the company in 2016 it has always been happy to take on projects anywhere in the UK, as can clearly be seen on the new website it launched in April (scs-stone.co.uk).

In fact, the contract for the 1,300m2 of Peakmoor for Rusacks Hotel came about because Stone Cladding Systems was already supplying the cladding sub-contractor that won the work, MetalTech Roofing & Cladding. It was using Aztec rainscreens on a project at New Waverley in Edinburgh. MetalTech took the system with it on to the Rusacks Hotel extension, where 40mm thick stone was used for the ground floor and 30mm above that. The architects were WCP, based in Aberdeen.

Both Rusacks Hotel and the Waverley project have been entered for this year’s Natural Stone Awards, judging for which is currently underway ahead of the announcement of the winners at a glittering presentation ceremony in London in December.

The Rusacks project started just as the world was being locked down in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, although Jason Kennedy says the lockdown in England and Scotland arrived when Stone Cladding Systems was working at full pelt. As Jason works mostly on his own he did not shut down.

MetalTech also carried on working. It was not allowed on-site at Rusacks but the project was mostly still at the design stage in any case, and MetalTech and Stone Cladding Systems were able to work together on the design of the cladding.

The Peakmoor sandstone, a Carboniferous millstone grit, was supplied by BlockStone, owned by Grants of Shoreditch, which already had the blocks required in stock at its Block Store in Cadeby Quarry in South Yorkshire. They were transported to Gloucester to be sawn and were finished in a yard in Newhaven in East Sussex, where Stone Cladding Systems helped design a bespoke processing machine specially for producing the cladding. Packing and final quality control is carried out at Newhaven.

The hotel extension was finished slightly behind schedule as a result of Covid, but not because of the stone or cladding system. “The stone industry kept going quite well during Covid,” says Jason. And because the stone specified was British there were none of the supply problems experienced by stone importers.

Not that Stone Cladding Systems eschews imported stone, although it generally restricts its imports to Europe. It has lately been using Jura limestone from Germany for 1,000m2 of cladding on a Holiday Inn in Blackpool, although it was the first time it had supplied an imported stone for two years. Covid, Brexit and the war in Ukraine have all combined to make imports more expensive and unreliable and British stone a more attractive option. “The supply chain is short and reliable,” says Jason.

He admits to an affinity with British stone. He is the son of Iain Kennedy, the former President of Stone Federation Great Britain who ran Realstone and BlockStone for many years, producing and selling stones from British quarries. Jason worked with his dad at Realstone for a while.

But whether it is British or imported, it is stone. “Natural stone is where we’re at and where we want to stay. We’re a stone company doing rainscreen rather than a rainscreen company doing stone,” says Jason, adding that concerns about global warming, sustainability and the carbon footprint of materials has helped both stone and rainscreens. “It’s one of the selling points of rainscreen: it combines economical build with environmental benefits.” And developers like the fact rainscreens make it easy to achieve the continually stricter ‘U’ value requirements of buildings.

Stone Cladding Systems has even minimised the carbon footprint of its offices by installing photovoltaic cells on the roof powering the low energy heating system and LED lighting. All the computers use the Cloud so there’s even less paper to be filed.

Bath Stone rainscreen

Jason is proud to be able to offer the only Bath Stone that has passed all the tests necessary for it to be used on a rainscreen. And it is currently being used on Stone Cladding System’s Aztec system for a new pavilion being built at Bath Cricket Club’s main North Parade ground.

That whole area of Bath around North Parade is being redeveloped and Jason hopes and expects to win more cladding work there thanks to the cricket club’s choice of Aztec. “Having reference buildings is quite key to future work,” says Jason, “so having the Aztec system used at North Parade, near the centre of Bath, is very useful.”

The developments at both North Parade and Rusacks have included curved fascias, which involves radiusing the face, although the back of stone remains flat in order to fit on to the lightweight aluminium frame that ties the rainscreen back to the main structure. Being able to provide the curved stones all helps to establish Stone Cladding Systems as a company that can answer an architect’s questions.

Jason has been steadily building his company since the opportunity to establish it arrived when he was made redundant from the design office at Realstone following the purchase of BlockStone and assets of Realstone by Grants of Shoreditch.

Jason had worked at Realstone for six years at that point and says: “Realstone was supplying a couple of projects that I had got specified. I thought: OK, I need to see these through. To do that I had to start my own business.”

He knew people in the industry who were prepared to extend him credit that he doubts he would otherwise have been offered.

Having been involved in the development of the cladding system at Realstone and specialised in rainscreen design, he was familiar with the process and could see that rainscreens were a growing market with their benefits of lighter weight and material savings, with rapid fixing using mast climbers and scissor lifts rather than scaffolding.

He completed the development of the Aztec system and has improved it over the years, now believing it is even better. “It’s simple and effective,” he says. And simplicity was always the key.

There are 12 stones that have been tested at VIVCI Technology Centre in Bedfordshire as suitable for use with the Aztec system. Tests carried out include hard and soft impact resistance, wind loading, and the various other requirements of the recently updated BS 8298, with a significant safety factor added on, going well beyond the conditions this country is ever likely to see, even with global warming.

The Aztec system comprises the aluminium frame with ‘T’ rails, brackets and black powder-coated clips so they cannot be seen through the open joints of the rainscreen. A neoprene anti-rattle strip is A1 fire tested and there is nothing else to catch alight.

Some rainscreen cladding uses a veneer of stone on a backing material. Even though the stone would be non-flammable and the backing might be, the glue might not be. To avoid any risk, Stone Cladding Systems uses only solid stone. And although there is more stone and stone is expensive, materials and processes involved in making a stone veneered composite panel are avoided, so using solid stone remains price competitive.

A 50mm air gap between the stone cladding and the insulation on the building ensures ventilation around the stone for temperature stability, so the building envelope does not get too hot or too cold. Open joints also help to stabilise air pressure. When the wind load is tested the joints are sealed with mastic to provide worse case safety, but Jason says he advises against closing the gaps between the stones. If the gaps are closed, it has to be with a flexible mastic because the system is designed to be flexible.

A flexible system

Stones such as Yorkstone and some hard limestones can be used in sizes up to 1200mm x 450mm, although more commonly the maximum size is 900mm x 450mm. Any size smaller than that can be used because all the stone is cut to specification. The stone would normally be 20mm, 30mm or 40mm thick, depending on what it is, the size of it and its position on the building. The clips that secure the stone top and bottom come in six different versions, and for some applications, such as the curved cladding in Bath, a bespoke design has to be developed.

Although the system is designed to be simple, using standard frames and rails, Stone Cladding Systems always sit on design meetings so any potential pitfalls can be eliminated immediately and sometimes value engineering can be explored by, for example, changing the way it is fixed around windows or the corner detail. Jason is also happy to give toolbox talks on site for the fixers and will stick with a new team for up to a day.

He says it is also useful for receiving feedback, although contractors usually find they love working with the natural stone system because it is so easy.

There are now enough specialist cladding contractors who have used the system to be able to give main contractors an approved installer list for the work, “because they do ask us for a list of people who can install the system”, says Jason.

The first two projects Jason saw through to completion after leaving Realstone were Sunderland Innovation Centre and a new building at Bradford Royal Infirmary. “Both projects were in the design stage so there wasn’t an issue with them needing materials on site tomorrow.”

As the number of reference projects has built up, familiarity with Stone Cladding Systems and its Aztec rainscreen has grown to a point where it is now specified by architects, whereas originally it tended to be selected by a contractor after a generic rainscreen system had been specified (although that also still happens).

Jason says it has been a hectic six years since he started his own business, but the success of it is its own reward. And he admits to feeling a little extra pride as he watched The Open in July.

Below are more projects with Aztec rainscreen cladding from Stone Cladding System.

The top project is Sunderland Hilton Garden Inn, on the banks of the River Wear in Sunderland is a 141-room hotel featuring Aztec 20mm Cebecca limestone ventilated rainscreen. The glass and limestone mix gave the architects of Redbox Design Group the light and spacious building they wanted without the need for a heavy support system. This was one of Stone Cladding System’s first projects, completed in 2016. The Aztec system was installed by Metcalf Roofing & Building.

Below that is the £150million transformation of the former Caltongate area in the Old Town in Edinburgh, for which Allan Murray Architects were the master planners and principal architects. The site links Waverley Station with the historic Royal Mile. Peakmoor sandstone was the stone of choice and is seen here as part of a lightweight, A1 non-combustible Aztec rainscreen.

scs-stone.co.uk

NAMM Tradex exhibition returns to Warwickshire Event Centre near Leamington Spa on 15 & 16 September.

With uncertainty about how the Covid-19 pandemic would pan out, the Tradex exhibition due to be held in Warwickshire last year by the National Association of Memorial Masons (NAMM) was put on hold. Now it’s back.

It has moved to September (15th & 16th) from the June spot it has occupied since it was re-launched in 2015 after a 14-year break. The change of date had been introduced for the 2021 event.

Of course, Tradex was not the only event put on hold last year. All over the world they were cancelled or postponed. The National Funeral Exhibition (NFE), which, like Tradex, is normally held every other year, was also due to take place in 2021. It has always been held in June and at one time incorporated Tradex. It returned this year in June as usual.

When NAMM resurrected its stand-alone Tradex exhibition it was supported by many of the major wholesalers, although some also attended NFE, which was why Tradex was originally staged just after NFE and close to Stoneleigh Park, where NFE is held. It was felt it would enable memorial wholesalers to move easily from one show to the next, and some did exhibit at both.

NFE, run by the National Association of Funeral Directors (NAFD), broke records in 2019 with more than 200 exhibitors and some 4,500 visitors. The NAFD says this year’s show attracted similar numbers, but memorial wholesalers were not among the exhibitors.

They were not at the 2019 NAMM Tradex, either, because they said a show every two years was too frequent for them. To make the most of the exhibition they like to have new collections to show with associated new brochures. But new designs and catalogues are expensive to produce, and the wholesalers don’t want to have to produce them on a two-yearly cycle.

They asked NAMM to schedule the show for three-yearly intervals, but NAMM said other exhibitors wanted the show to be held every two years and did not intend to change the frequency. Some of the wholesalers now say they would prefer a five-year interval.

In 2019 Tradex went ahead without the memorial wholesalers, although they planned to return in 2021 and many will be back at Warwickshire Event Centre this year.

Although it is now five years since the wholesalers exhibited at Tradex, they don’t all have new designs and catalogues ready to show visitors. They scarcely need to point out that the past two years have been extraordinary, with lockdowns, supply disruptions, huge price increases on shipping and containers exacerbated by a 20% fall in the value of sterling against the dollar, and additional price inflation, particularly on energy and fuel, as a consequence of Russia invading Ukraine.

In the event, the wholesalers say demand for memorials since the end of the first 2020 lockdown has been exceptionally high, which has kept the industry busy satisfying existing demand without introducing new collections, especially with supplies disrupted.

Odlings, for example, which will be back at Tradex this year, says it had intended to show new designs but put the idea on hold. It is compensating by having a cocktail bar on its stand to attract visitors.

Chris Kemp, who has been at Odlings for 35 years, has been promoted from Sales Manager to the new role of General Manager as part of the company’s expansion, which has included extending the premises into the building opposite its existing site in Hull to hold the extra stock it needs to meet demand and minimise delays. Lee Hall has become Sales Manager and Sarah Lewis has been recruited as Key Account & Retail Manager. Chris says the company is so flat out fulfilling orders for memorials from its existing catalogue that it has not had any time to spend on producing new designs.

The supply chain is not as bad as it was, although it is still not back to normal, and says Chris, “with the level of demand at the moment it comes in and flies straight out the door”. He says some lead times have increased but “we are doing our best under challenging circumstances”.

Odlings will be exhibiting products at Tradex that highlight the exceptional skills of its 18 craftspeople, including entries in the Craftex competition for memorial skills that is an integral part of Tradex. It will also be showing one of the areas the company has expanded into – making its own photoplaques. And it has a new range of stone and glass chippings.

Frank England is another of the wholesalers that does not expect to have its new range ready for Tradex. Nick Livermore says: “We’re working on a new catalogue but we probably won’t get it done in time for Tradex.” When it comes, he promises all new designs.

It might come as a surprise to visitors to the show to see sandblasters on the Frank England stand, but Frank England has started selling dustless sandblasters from Abra. They include the Autoblaster, which fits into an area of 1600mm square and for the price of a man’s annual wage offers Windows-controlled fully automatic sandblasting. The Abras do not require any special knowledge or skills. Work fields are marked and parameters defined using the supplied software.

One of the reasons for a high demand for memorials is the increase in the death rate brought about by the pandemic – in 2020 the number of deaths was 15% above the pre-pandemic five-year average and in 2021 was still 10% above. Even this year (with some deaths still to be recorded) the rate is 2% above the pre-pandemic level, although it seems to be levelling out (see the graph below).

It has been speculated by some memorial masons that the restriction on the number of people allowed to attend funerals encouraged the bereaved to spend more on memorials. And as many of those who died from Covid were elderly, at least some of them would have made provision in their legacy for their funeral and a memorial.

The fact that there is a high level of demand in spite of double digit price increases on many memorials – some are now more than 30% more expensive than they were in 2019 – demonstrates once again that people do not have much of a preconceived idea of what a memorial costs.

Because companies of all kinds are already struggling to meet existing demand for their products, trying to raise extra business by exhibiting at a show lacks some of the normal rationale and Robertson Memorials and George Willcox, for example, say they will not be showing as many memorials this time as they have in the past, while Belle Lapidi, which has been at previous Tradexes, is not attending at all.

Jake Walsh at Belle Lapidi says the company is not exhibiting this time because its new catalogue is not ready. He says he will be visiting and he hopes the company will be at the show in 2024 with a Belle Lapidi Brochure Chapter II, with exciting new registered designs in granites never used before. The idea of registering the designs, as Belle Lapidi did for its original brochure, is to emphasise that they are available from its registered distributors only.

Belle Lapidi has also invested in a quarry in India, which it says guarantees it the supplies of top quality black granite for memorials that some companies are struggling to source. It allows it to price exceptionally competitively, says Jake, with faster delivery times than ever. He says from January next year the company expects to be able to increase imports from four containers a month to 12.

Another memorial wholesaler with its own quarry in India is CJ Imports. In fact, the quarry, producing Premium Khammam Ebony Black, came first and the company that owned it established its own memorial wholesale business in the UK. It has been a regular exhibitor at Tradex and will be back this year.

Saurav Gupta at CJ Imports says the company having its own quarry meant that while most wholesalers were facing (and still are facing) supply chain problems, CJ Imports was able to maintain its delivery times. “This, combined with our quality and service, has meant we have a strong customer base, which allowed us to achieve a record 14 containers in one week earlier this year.”

At Tradex, CJ Imports says it will exhibit new and unique memorials designed exclusively for the show and for its Edition 7 catalogue, although that will not be printed until early in 2023.

Covid lockdowns undoubtedly changed the landscape as far as computer use is concerned and there is a feeling that memorial masons are more used to finding what they want online now. They can also buy it online, with most wholesalers having online ordering facilities to which trade customers can register and from which even more customers are now comfortable about placing orders.

Nevertheless, those exhibiting at Tradex believe there is a benefit to meeting customers face-to-face to establish and maintain relationships.

Robertson Memorials says it will have new designs to show visitors (one is pictured at the top of this page) and a new catalogue featuring them, although the catalogue will also include old favourites. In its factory, it is investing in equipment to increase production, although Graeme Robertson, who heads the company, says recruiting and retaining people has been the major problem.

George Willcox expects to show four or five memorials that MD Simon Bellamy says he is thinking of auctioning off at the end of the exhibition to raise money to help Ukrainians.

The company will have a new brochure on its stand, although Simon says it will be more of a reprint, combining the memorials that were previously in two different catalogues, some in both. The company is also amending its branding.

Like everyone else, George Willcox has had to pass on cost increases as price rises to its customers, including introducing a charge for deliveries that were previously free. However,  Simon says the difficulties associated with importing are easing. “We’re not back to pre-pandemic normal, but this might be the new normal.”

One memorial supplier that was at Tradex in 2019 (and is back this year) is Honister Slate Mine, which makes a range of products, including memorials, from the Cumbrian slate it extracts from its mine in Keswick.

Clearly it has not had the problems associated with importing stone, but don’t think it will not have had price increases. It has faced the same inflationary pressures as everyone else, on top of which mines and quarries in the UK have lost the red diesel rebate they enjoyed until April. That  increased the duty they paid on diesel from 11.81p a litre to the 52.95p that everyone else was paying. It would have been more if Chancellor Rishi Sunak had not knocked 5p off in the Budget.

Barham Stone, which makes individual memorials in British and imported stones (mostly from Europe) is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. It is back at Tradex but says it has struggled to have memorials to show because of the high level of demand. It says delays in supply have not been restricted to imported stone, with even York stone now taking as much as 10 weeks to arrive instead of the pre-pandemic four, and slate from Wales not available until next year.

Barham’s costs are also increasing, and while it absorbed the increases last year, this year it has had to increase the prices of its memorials by 8-10% and deliveries by 8%. Its lead time for supplying memorials has increased from about six weeks to as much as 20 weeks. It would like to expand but lacks space. It hopes to take one of three new units that are scheduled to be built near its premises in Leicestershire.

Indigenous stones have benefited as much as imported stones from the increased demand for memorials – perhaps even more. People seem to like the idea of using local materials and skills and have encompassed a rustic look that suits the geology of the British Isles.

Another supplier of memorials in British stone is Fyfe Glenrock, once part of stone wholesaler Pisani and now owned by aggregates company Leiths. It offers memorials in Black Hills granite from the last active quarry actually in Aberdeen, once known as the Granite City.

Fyfe Glenrock is not exhibiting at Tradex, but Richard Collinson, Commercial Manager, says the Black Hills memorials have become more popular, with people accepting and even appreciating the irregularities in the bluey-grey to purple rock that will survive many generations of people. However, and because of the irregularities, Fyfe Glenrock supplies finished memorials only (the granite takes a fine polish), with or without inscriptions. During the pandemic Fyfe Glenrock has even sold memorials into England to those who wanted to avoid the supply difficulties from the Far East.

As well as the memorial wholesalers, NAMM Tradex exhibitors include the companies that sell the machinery, tools, equipment and ancillaries associated with memorials – sandblasting equipment, photoplaques, foundations and, increasingly, computer software, both for designing memorials and for business management and memorial design, like the system from regular exhibitor The Blast Shop, which introduced it in 2019 and is back this year with the latest updates.

Director Rob Critchley says the company will also be showing its sandblasting equipment and fixing systems, and it hopes to be showing a “cool lifting device” it is introducing to its range following a visit to the Stone+tec exhibition in Nuremberg, Germany, in June.

In the days when people wanted Deutschmarks, the Nuremberg exhibition was up there with Marmo+Mac in Verona, Italy, as one of Europe’s major stone exhibitions. It is smaller these days. It once had a significant memorial masonry element to it with a lot of innovative designs on show. This year the memorial section could not fill even one hall.

However, The Blast Shop did find its  “cool lifting device”, although whether or not it is at Tradex will depend on one arriving in the UK. The Blast Shop placed an order for six at Stone+tec but Rob says issues of importing from Europe remain, especially with rising fuel prices exacerbating the problems.

Manufacturers everywhere are also finding it difficult to keep up with demand for their products. Goldmann, the German company that makes The Blast Shop’s blast cabinets, has been trying to recruit more people to meet demand but there are labour shortages in Europe just as there are in the UK and America. Rob says he has been especially pleased with the level of demand for the £65,000 Goldmann automatic blast cabinet.

As well as The Blast Shop, Rob Critchley runs memorial masons S Critchley & Son, and Rob says it is as busy as every other memorial mason. It closed down during the initial 2020 lockdown but three months of lost sales were recovered in three weeks after re-opening and it is still trying to catch up.  

One product that will not be on The Blast Shop stand this time is its impact etching device – because it is made in Ukraine.

Rob says he had originally been looking at a Russian-made etcher and is glad now he chose the Ukrainian brand instead. He says he was selling one a month until the Russian invasion disrupted supply. He had two left in stock, but is cannibalising them in order to be able to provide spares for existing customers.

Also look out for a new size for use with gold leaf. There are six-hour sizes and 12-hour sizes, but you have to arrange it so you can go back and use them at the appropriate time after you have applied them. With The Blast Shop’s new size the gold leaf can be applied anywhere from 25 minutes after application until as much as 15 hours later.

But back to The Blast Shop computer solutions. The Memorial Design software it introduced in 2019 has proved popular with retail masons. It can be bought outright for £2,500 or on a monthly licence of £75, which about 30% of users have opted for. It has had three major updates since its launch.

The Blast Shop has also developed management software for memorial retailers. After a year of developments and field trials with some co-operating customers, Rob is now looking to sign up the first few users, although he wants to roll it out slowly to be sure it satisfies everybody. As he says, masons tend to work in their own particular ways.

Software companies SNA Software and Indigo21 are also exhibiting at Tradex, Indigo 21 for the first time. Jeff Green, who runs the company, has set up Memorial Works to offer masons a range of products to help with customer relationship management and the production of memorials. He says his father was a lettercutter and he grew up around the memorial trade. “The stone trade has always been my passion and it’s great fun working with memorial masons.”

He and the graphic designers he works with can produce unique designs for memorials. Elements of the design are supplied by the memorial mason to Memorial Works and the finished design, ready to be produced as a stencil for blasting, is returned. It is all completed in the cloud and Memorial Works can accommodate whatever software the memorial mason uses, such as MasonART or Illustrator.

On the Odlings MCR stand the sandblasting cabinets will be familiar enough. During the show they will be sold at pre-pandemic prices, but the irrepressible Sally Clarke warns it will be the last time they will be available at that price.

She says she spent the first lockdown in 2020 stocking up on all the components Odlings MCR would need to continue to make the blast cabinets, because she could see there were going to be shortages. It enabled the company to hold prices. But new components coming in reflect all the price increases since then on steel, energy and transport that mean the prices of the finished products will also have to increase.

Odlings MCR will also be showing a full range of compressors this time, including, for the first time, screw compressors that are much quieter and keep the moisture out of the blast material, so you don’t have to spend hours cleaning the equipment. Pete Johnston, Odlings MCR’s compressor specialist, will be on the stand to explain the benefits.

Apart from that, Sally says Odlings MCR will be in the same place as always at the exhibition and on the stand will be familiar smiling faces, including hers, with the addition of Steve Mottram, a salesman who has replaced Steve Pentith.

Other exhibitors include Combined Masonry Supplies, showing handling equipment, tools and consumables; sandblasting stencil tapes from Doro; stone cleaners from D2 Bio; the fixing systems of Nettlebanks and CCA; paints from Protec Arts; ceramics from Sadler Green; and foundation systems from Sharcon Monumental (which does not have a website) and JKH Drainage.

JKH is now making the StoneSafe memorial fixing system invented by Anton Matthews, owner of the Memorial Stone Centre in Bognor Regis, West Sussex, and says it will be showing it on its stand.

Could imported memorials be banned?

There was a lot of talk among burial and cremation authorities last year about banning imported stone memorials as part of the bereavement sector’s contribution to reaching the UK’s Net Zero carbon emission targets.

A report, called Climate Change, Our Legacy? was produced by the Environmental Stewardship Group (ESG), formed in March last year to address the issue. Its core members were the Cremation Society of Great Britain, the Institute of Cemetery & Crematorium Management, the Federation of Burial & Cremation Authorities and the CDS Group, which specialises in cemetery and crematorium development, open space design and environmental solutions.

There have been 12 online video conferences held to discuss the issues. They involved government departments, independent cemetery and crematoria owners, funeral directors and their suppliers, as well as local authorities. One of the suggestions for cutting carbon was to ban imported stone memorials because of the carbon content resulting from most of them being shipped from China and India. Someone came up with a figure for the amount of carbon reduction that could be achieved, although it seemed to be based on the whole of the UK’s importation of stone rather than the small proportion of it used for memorials.

The National Association of Memorial Masons (NAMM) did not participate in the video conferences, although Brent Stevenson, of Stevenson Memorials, was involved as a representative of the British Register of Accredited Memorial Masons (BRAMM) and the Memorial Awareness Board (MAB).

Brent says by the end of the round of debates, talk about banning imported memorials had diminished, largely because bereavement’s big carbon contribution comes from its gas-fired crematoria. Nevertheless, Brent says he has already invested in machinery to make memorials in British stones because of an increase in demand for them in recent years.

The Directors of memorial masons Barningham Memorials Ltd of Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, have been disqualified from being directors for a total of 14 years for taking deposits in excess of £30,000 from customers in spite of knowing their business was insolvent.

Paul Richard Hubbard and Susan Ann Hubbard, both in their 60s, have been disqualified as directors for eight and six years, respectively, from this month (August 2022).

Barningham Memorials had traded since 2003 but went into liquidation in March 2020.

However, the Insolvency Service says the company was in fact insolvent from August 2019. However, it continued to take payments and deposits from would-be customers, despite knowing it would not be able to provide the finished products. In total, the company took more than £30,000 from 41 customers during this period.

The company had received a five-year ban on installing memorials by North East Lincolnshire Council in 2015 for failing to adhere to local regulations and was forced to rely on subcontractors to install its memorials.

The Secretary of State for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy accepted disqualification undertakings from both directors after they did not dispute that they had been responsible for the company continuing to take money from customers while it was insolvent.

Disqualification undertakings are the administrative equivalent of a disqualification order but do not involve court proceedings.

The disqualification undertakings prevent them from directly, or indirectly, becoming involved in the promotion, formation or management of a company without the permission of a court.

Rob Clarke, Chief Investigator at the Insolvency Service said: “Any business in financial difficulty should be aware that its primary duty is to its creditors, and ensuring that their losses are minimised.

“In continuing to accept pre-payments for memorials which they had no reasonable prospect of supplying, Paul and Susan Hubbard have caused additional pain to grieving families over and above the purely financial loss.”

Paul Richard Hubbard and Susan Ann Hubbard are currently living in Scotland.