Rock Star (From Bournemouth Echo)

Rock Star

7:00pm Friday 6th February 2009 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
• Comments(0)

PURBECK stone is well-hard: the Ray Winstone of the geological world. It’s so hard, for goodness sake, that when you whack it with a tungsten chisel, it actually smells of burning.

Formed in the Jurassic period, around 125 million years ago, Purbeck stone doesn’t take any you-know-what from anyone.

And I have got precisely half a day to turn a bit of it into something that resembles a flower.

Instructing me in this apparent Mission Impossible is David Callaghan, who runs the Burngate Stone Centre near Langton Matravers. A geologist-turned-stone mason, David oversees the centre, comprising a series of restored “banker” sheds, the traditional name for the buildings where stone is mined, quarried, worked and cut.

Burngate is part of the Purbeck Keystone Project, a Lottery-backed initiative to educate locals and visitors about the importance of stone to the Isle of Purbeck. Its aim is to increase understanding and provide the opportunity for people to get to grips with the substance upon which the isle resides and which, for centuries, was its principal export.

David shows me Burngate’s own mine, a sloping shaft where stone would have been hewn and taken up a slide on a trundle, to be sold and turned into anything from dry-stone walls to bits of Westminster Abbey. “Until the 1960s there were mines here,” he says. “They went 20 or 30 feet along, following the bed.”

Now his mine is a home to exotic bats and most of the other shafts have been bricked up for safety.

The buildings are named after the bankers stonemasons traditionally work on. At Burngate they have a number of outside bankers, giant slices of tree-trunk that amateur stone masons can rent space on, all the time gazing towards the magnificent view of the scudding Solent and the tip of The Needles.

But there’s also a studio housing wooden bankers and heated by an enormous woodburner and it’s in here that David and I and Nick, a local builder who’s joining our one-day course, will learn the intricate craft of stone-masonry.

There are nine tools including tungsten-tipped chisels, a pointer for making little holes and mallets and hammers.

“The round-headed chisels are for use with mallets,” says David, “The straight-topped ones for hammers.”

David discusses the qualities of stone. Apparently Bath stone is “woolly” and other stones can go “cheesy” when wet.

Then he introduces us to some local stone. Portland Stone (Buckingham Palace, The Cenotaph, St Paul’s Cathedral) is also quarried on Purbeck and tends to be lighter in colour. Purbeck Marble is identified by the profusion of molluscs; the gorgeously-named Purbeck Spangle glitters with fossils. “It takes a beautiful polish,” enthuses David.

Then there’s Purbeck Grub, useful for flooring, and Purbeck Cap, “the really hard stuff”, which is what I’ll be using.

Nick and I use carbon paper to trace our template onto our stone blocks. I choose the simplest-looking design in the book.

Once the design is completed we place the stone on our bankers, then it’s goggles on – only a fool would attempt masonry without them – and we’re off. I seize the dramatic mallet but after a couple of blows, nothing’s moving.

“Use this,” says David, picking out a considerably smaller tungsten chisel and the Dummy hammer. Two seconds later and the first bits of stone are flying off. We start by carving the outline. I grip the chisel as if my life depended on it and very soon there are chips flying everywhere; into my mouth, nose and hair.

There is something deeply satisfying, soothing, even, about whacking away at this stone and watching the flower slowly emerge. You have to remember the relief aspect of the work, ensuring you leave enough stone for the high and low areas, which helps create the light and shade.

My first petal goes well but the second is far more stubborn. I give it an almighty crack and too much comes off. Oops. We tap away from 11am with a break for lunch and as we come to the end of the day, I decide my flower needs just one more feature – an identifiable centre.

David has just the thing. “Sparrow pecking,” he says, producing a pointed chisel from my roll. “Let the chisel spring up and down in your hand,” he instructs, making it look so easy. It’s not. Five hours of gripping my tungsten chisel has left me unable to let go. He tells me to “let it bounce”. Slowly, carefully I do, and the marks start appearing.

By 4.30pm it’s time to go home. Nick has produced a triumphant Tudor Rose. David has carved a few more exquisite letters. And I have produced something that really does look like a flower!

I am dead chuffed. I started this day with a deal of respect for stonemasons anyway. But even these few hours have shown me what a deeply skilled craft it is and I am determined to appreciate it more.

Driving home I pass walls, churches, houses and public buildings. I pass banks, Corfe Castle and memorials carved with the names of the fallen. Stone me, the stuff really is everywhere…

• The Burngate Stone Centre runs a wide range of courses on stone carving, masonry and letter cutting. For more information email info@burngatestone centre.co.uk or call David Callaghan on 07968 557274.