The masons mark of Brian Boden of Boden & Ward Stonemasons in Weedon, Northamptonshire, has appeared on the masonry of some of the country’s finest buildings. Here he recalls some of the story of his life as a stonemason
It was two days before my 15th birthday – 14 April 1958. I started working for White & Co at Wellingborough. I was taking my first steps towards becoming a stonemason. A friend of the family, Sid Blenkharn, knew I was going to be leaving school and would be looking for an apprenticeship because I just didn’t fancy working in an office. He said why not try stonemasonry.
It was pretty primitive by today’s standards but everything you would expect of a masonry company in those days. There were two saws. One was steam driven with a boiler that had to be stoked every morning. It drove a one-foot diameter (300mm) blade. The other had a petrol engine with a starting handle you had to turn to start it up. It had an 8-feet (2.4m) long, straight blade in the middle and a five-gallon tank of water on top to cool the blade. It had to be chained to the stone it was cutting.
It couldn’t tackle the six- or seven-ton blocks of Weldon stone that they used to roll off the backs of lorries. We had to saw those by hand to make them small enough to be able to chain the saw to them.
The hand saw had a person on either end of it. I was on one end and on the other was a mason who could keep going all day. It was hard work and your muscles ached, but you could only use your right arm or it didn’t saw straight. The mason had a square and if you tried to use the other hand or put both hands on the saw he would belt you with it. I felt that square many times.
For working on the banker we used fire sharpened chisels that had to be taken to the local blacksmith at the end of each week for sharpening. It wasn’t just a question of grinding them, they had to be tempered. It was a skilled job. If we found a decent piece of metal that we thought would make a good chisel, the blacksmith would make it up for us. We couldn’t have operated without the blacksmith.
My apprenticeship with White & Co lasted seven years. I was indentured for five years, then you had to do two years as an improver before you got your papers. During my apprenticeship I got my City & Guilds in Stonemasonry and also studied brickwork alongside of it, which is often useful on restoration work.
The old mason I was indentured to was Harry White, one of the brothers who owned the company. He was 75 when I started. He said he was going to retire when he had finished teaching me, which he did. He was 82. He had spent most of his life as a journeyman foreman, travelling round the country. When he was in his 60s he decided that was enough travelling and stayed in the workshop most of the time after that.
He came with me the first time I went out on site. I was putting in a dormer window and he wanted to see what sort of a job I made of it. We put a rope round him to pull him up the ladder so he could have a look and let him back down again on the rope.
When I started I was paid 1s 2d an hour, which is less than 6p – that’s about £2.30 a week. I got a 6d (2.5p) an hour raise each year. When I was 18 I was given an extra 3d (1.25p) an hour and was moved to the end of the banker shop to be the pace-setter because I was young, strong and fit and I could turn it out. The others were happier to have me as the pace-setter than someone from outside because I had come up through the ranks.
We did a lot of bay windows in those days because all the terrace houses had bay windows. We used to load everything up on a hand cart and push it round town to where the stone was needed. The mason would be at the back and the apprentice pulled from the front with a rope. We had to work on the banker and go out fixing, which was good because it made you appreciate what was needed on site. Today you get a lot of masons who only work on the banker and they don’t have much idea about what you need on site and sometimes it shows.
When I had been at work about two weeks we had to put new stones on the top of the steeple at a church in Irthingborough, which is a village just the other side of Wellingborough. There was a steeplejack’s ladder going up to a little steeplejack’s scaffold at the top of the spire. I went up with a mason who said he needed a pattern of the top stone. When we got to the top he told me to clamber out of the scaffolding and stand on the spire. Then he left me there 180ft (55m) up, making some excuse that he had forgotten something and went and had a cup of tea. I could see him. It cured me of any fear of heights.
On another occasion we were putting a coffin into a family vault at Burton Latimer cemetery. We had opened the vault and put the coffin inside. The coffin had to go on to a shelf and be closed by a slab of stone. The coffin had gone into the vault and they sent me down with it. Then they closed the 3in (75mm) thick slate slab to the entrance of the tomb leaving me in pitch darkness with this fresh stiff. I was frightened to death. They thought that was hysterical when they eventually got me out. I grew up very quickly.
In those days, once you had finished your apprenticeship you almost automatically moved on because if you stayed with the same company you were always considered the apprentice. I went to a company called Higgins for a couple of years and then I wanted to see what London was like and spent a couple of years there with Dove Bros, living in digs and coming home at weekends. I didn’t think much of that and returned to Northampton. I went to work for E F Choice & Co, which is where I met Ian Ward, who had been an apprentice at Chichester Cathedral.
We eventually set up Boden & Ward together 25 years ago this year. When Ian got married and moved to Somerset I asked Sean Collins, who had been here several years by then, if he wanted to take over, which he did 12 years ago, with Alex Ward also coming back into the business (see NSS August issue). He’s done a marvellous job with the company and it has allowed me to carry on being a mason, because I love the job.
As a mason you get a hell of a satisfaction out of what you have created, although these days I spend most of my time on site and very rarely go on the banker. The youngsters today, the way they work using cutters and spinners is alien to me. I wouldn’t be the pace-setter today, I would be the one desperately trying to keep up.
I miss some aspects of the old days, but a lot is better these days. The welfare of the masons is much better now than when I started, although it was never deliberately bad. People didn’t know about HAVS and silicosis.
If I were talking to youngsters thinking about becoming stonemasons I would say it’s a fantastic job – if you work hard. You will get masses of satisfaction out of it but you have to put the effort in to learn the job and you won’t learn it in five minutes. I would say: look at that cathedral. Almost everything you can see has been produced by a stone mason. And it’s a craft with a future. A lot of people now want quality – and stonework is quality.
Stone is a magnificent material and every job is different. As you go from job to job something will crop up that hasn’t cropped up before. But if you apply yourself to it using the skills you have learnt you may see it overcome and you will be a better craftsman for having done it.