Stonemason
The craft of the
stonemason has existed since the dawn of
civilization - creating buildings, structures and sculpture using
stone from the ground. These materials have been used to
construct some of the most long-lasting, ancient
monuments,
artifacts,
cathedrals and
cities in a wide variety of cultures. One of the most famous stonemasons is the famous artist, sculptor, and architect,
Michelangelo. Some of the most awe-inspiring stonemasonry includes the
Easter Island statues, the
Egyptian Pyramids, the Greek
Parthenon,
Stonehenge,
Chartres Cathedral, and many more.
Put simply, stonemasonry is the craft of turning rough stone blocks into accurate geometrical shapes, mostly simple, but some of staggering complexity, and then fixing the resulting stones together with mortar to form buildings.
Quarrymen split the rock, and extract the resulting blocks of stone from the ground.
Sawyers cut these rough blocks into rectangles of the required size.
Banker masons are workshop based, and specialise in carving stones into the geometrical shapes required by a building's design. They can produce anything from stones with simple chamfers to tracery windows.
Carvers cross the line from craft to art, and use their artistic ability to carve stone into foliage, figures, animals or abstract designs.
Fixer masons specialise in the fixing of stones onto buildings, using lifting tackle,
mortar, and sometimes metal fixings. The precise tolerances necessary make this a highly skilled job.
Memorial masons carve gravestones and inscriptions.
This list is not exhaustive, but gives some idea of the main branches of the craft. The terms
freemason and master mason are not used in modern day stonemasonry.
Stonemasons use all types of stone, igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary.
Sedimentary
Many of the world's most famous buildings have been built of sedimentary stone, from
Durham Cathedral to
St Peter's in
Rome. There are two main types of sedimentary stone, limestones and sandstones. Many start off soft when they are taken from the ground, allowing them to be cut and carved into shape with relative ease, and then they harden slowly when exposed to the air. Examples of limestones include Bath and Portland stone. York stone is a famous sandstone.
Metamorphic
Marble has traditionally been used for carving statues, and for facing many Byzantine and Renaissance Italian buildings. The traditional home of the marble industry is the area around
Carrara in
Italy, from where a bright white marble is extracted in vast quantities.
Slate is a popular choice of stone for memorials and inscriptions, as its fine grain and hardness means it leaves details very sharp.
Igneous stones
Granite is one of the hardest stones, and requires such different techniques to sedimentary stones that it is virtually a separate trade. With great persistence, simple mouldings can and have been carved into granite, for example in many Cornish churches and the city of Aberdeen. Generally, however, it is used for purposes that require its strength and durability, such as kerbstones and breakwaters.
A career in stonemasonry does not require any specific academic requirements; however when first entering the industry, an interest in Art and Design is favourable. City & Guilds run highly accredited stone masonry courses that combine on-site training with college theory work.
Stonemasons use a wide variety of tools to handle and shape stone blocks & slabs (rough
ashlar) into finished articles.
The basic tools for splitting the stone are a mallet, chisels, and a metal straight edge. With these one can make a flat surface - the basis of all stonemasonry. As for the laying of the stone itself, a brick trowel becomes the essential tool for the stonemason.
The chisels range in a variety of sizes and shapes, dependent upon the function in which they are being used. There are different chisels for different materials and sizes of the materials being split, along with chisels that will give different types of splits on the material.
The masonry trowel is used for the application of the mortar between and around the stones as they are set into place. The mason's trowel seems to be the most unchanged of the mason's tools over the hundreds of years that stone construction has taken place.
Today power tools such as hydraulic chisels, abrasive spinners and angle grinders are much used: these save time and money, but are hazardous and require just as much skill as the hand tools that they augment.
The medieval stonemason was usually a countryman, as very few stone buildings were built in the towns and cities, where most houses were built of timber. He was also a wage earner; at a time when most craftsmen were selling a product he was selling his labour. These two facts are often cited as possible reasons why masons did not form guilds until in
1356, considerably later than most of the other
guilds.
There was in
Saxon England almost no tradition of building in stone, and few of the wooden structures from this time have survived. Following the
Norman Conquest the many building projects the invaders initiated would necessarily have been directed by master masons from the Continent. We know the names of a few of them, such as
William of Sens who was appointed to oversee the rebuilding of
Canterbury Cathedral following a disastrous fire in
1174. He had previously been Master of Works at
Saint-Etienne de Sens. Although he is remembered now for his work on Canterbury Cathedral, among his contemporaries he was renowned for his skill as a cutter of stone and for his knowledge of
carpentry. He is also said to have devised a faster and more efficient method for loading and unloading boats. Given the paucity of roads in that era, water transport was vitally important. This shows something of the range of skills required of a
Master Mason of that era.However the use of
French masons was a matter of choice rather than policy, for when William of Sens was incapacitated by a fall from a scaffold he was replaced by William the Englishman.
From the beginning of the craft in England, the rough and unskilled work was done by Englishmen, who with time and practice learnt the trade and eventually became skilled and capable craftsmen. Most of the training took place in the
quarries, where much of the stone was finished, at least partially, before being transported to the building site. As this happened, unskilled workers rose to positions of responsibility. It is possible to trace the careers of several men as they were promoted from the quarries to work on the actual buildings as layers or setters.
If the medieval mason was working on a project for the king he was probably a "pressed man". Such was the scale and extent of the building work of the period that there was usually a shortage of craftsmen. In these situations the crown used its prerogatives to
impress the men that were needed. The
Sheriff of each county was instructed to select a certain number of masons and other tradesmen and send them to particular building operations. About 140 were impressed in this way to work at
Westminster in
1253,
Beaumaris Castle employed 400 pressed masons in
1295, whilst at the same time the builders of
Caernarfon Castle were trying to get hold of another 100 men.
When
William of Wykeham used the Crown's authority to recruit men to work on
Windsor Castle in
1359, he was said to have impressed nearly every mason and carpenter in England so that there were no good craftsmen available for other work. This was probably the largest assembly of masons there had ever been in England. John of Sponlee in
Gloucestershire was the Master Mason and Robert of Gloucester the Warden of the masons, so the code of practice would probably have been based on that in the west of England. When all these men dispersed they would have carried away both the further skills they had acquired and a knowledge of the mason's customs in most areas of England. We should not think of the medieval mason as being parochial.
Some 9000 parish
churches,
abbeys,
monasteries and
cathedrals were built in
England during the
Middle Ages. The "disease of building" as it was called began in
Europe after
1000 AD, out of relief that the world had not ended, and continued until the decades after the
Black Death in
1348.
If it was suitable, local stone was used. In Northern France and the South of England including
London they largely used a material called
freestone. This is a form of
limestone which is quite soft and easy to work when it is first quarried and then hardens with time and exposure to air. The men who worked the freestone were often called Freestone Masons. The earliest known use of the name Freemason was in
1376 in London. Four men were chosen to represent the city's builders on the Common Council of Trade. They were originally listed as
Freemasons although the word is then crossed out and replaced with simply Mason.
*
Stonemason occupation information*
Stonemason job summary*
A Stonemason's range of work*
The Stone Foundation*
The Burra Charter
