Niches in an entrance porch of the Royal Albert Hall on London’s South Bank that have remained empty since the Hall was opened by Queen Victoria in 1871 are to be filled with Portland limestone carvings of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

The life-size carvings will be either side of the doors of the North Porch, which was the original royal entrance to the Hall.

And at the South Porch, which was added in 2003, the niches will be filled by bronzes of our current Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip.

The artists chosen to produce the sculptures as part of the Hall’s 150^th anniversary celebrations are Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust (QEST) scholars.

The Portland stone carvings of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert are being produced by Tom Brown and his colleagues (Josh Locksmith, Tom Nicholls and Sam Lee) at London Stone Carving, while the bronzes will be the work of QEST Finnis Scott Foundation Scholar Poppy Field.

Josh Locksmith, of London Stone Carving, was central to the visual and conceptual design and development of the sculptures as well as the actual sculpting of the clay maquettes (pictured above).

The commissions were awarded following a competition involving a shortlist of seven QEST sculptors.

The Hall as originally conceived by Prince Albert was intended to be called the Central Hall of Arts & Sciences, but by the time it was being built Prince Albert had been dead six years and Queen Victoria gave it his name in her husband’s honour.

The Hall was designed by civil engineers of the Royal Engineers and built by Lucas Brothers. It was always intended that sculptures of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert should fill the niches to the royal entrance and the current project will complete that architectural intention.

The bronzes for the South Porch recognise the Hall’s current patron, Queen Elizabeth II and her late husband.

The plan is for the sculptures to be unveiled in the summer next year.

Deborah Pocock, CEO of the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust, says: “We are so proud that QEST scholars have been commissioned to finally finish the Royal Albert Hall’s iconic façade through the creation of these sculptures and we are extremely grateful to the Royal Albert Hall for choosing to work with QEST in championing British craftsmanship.”

Ian McCulloch, President of the Royal Albert Hall, says: “The Hall is in our temporary stewardship, and it is our duty to ensure it is here to inspire generations to come. I felt that we should commemorate the Hall’s 150^th anniversary with something tangible, and these sculptures will finally complete the façade of our glorious Grade I Listed building.

“This anniversary gives us the opportunity to leave a legacy of public art of a high quality and craftsmanship, for which we are honoured to commission the QEST Scholars.”

As Christmas approaches, Robert Merry contemplates what the post COP26 year ahead holds in store for the stone industry and the world. 

So it’s Christmas again. We made it, dear reader, you and me. Despite the pandemic and global warming with its floods, fires and rising sea levels. Not that we are directly responsible for these, although I suspect we have contributed in our own small way.

But yes, we made it. And this is traditionally the time for reflection on the year nearly over and contemplation for the year ahead.

So what are we going to do next year to change our lifestyle, you and me? Air source heat pumps? Solar panels on the roof? Become vegetarians? Only eat home grown produce in season? Buy clothes made from recycled clothes? Only work on projects that use indigenous stones? It’s a big list to get your meat-free head round next year.

There are manufacturers of adhesives and other chemicals saying they can’t afford to re-test all their products in the face of the new (and already delayed by one year) UKCA accreditation system for British Standards. Some are pulling out of the market altogether. The value of their UK sales is too small for them to bother about, especially as the profits are even smaller.

There is a chance we will become the little ol’ backwater the Romans, the Saxons, the Vikings and the French invaded. They all came and saw, conquered and, ultimately, became part of what it is to be British or were asked to leave – nicely (we are British after all).

We keep digging up artefacts of the Roman occupation as global warming and consequential floods wash away more land to reveal our ancestors’ brick-a-brac and the odd statue.

A return to ‘home grown’ (as it were) could be a huge shot in the arm for British stone quarries.

Except that many of the UK stones cannot be used with current interior specifications. They aren’t suited to wet areas – bathrooms, kitchen worktops or thin internal floors – which are the most popular areas for the use of imported natural and not so natural engineered stone. There are obviously some exceptions – British slate and granite, for instance. But nobody is going to specify British sandstone for a shower floor... are they?

I know of one British quarry owner investing vast sums in opening up another part of their quarry to expand production. They believe the market for their product will increase and they want to be ready to serve; to supply. Good for them. It has to be more sustainable than importing.

So will specifications change to suit a locally supplied stone? Or will clients still import, even if they face rising prices and longer waits for the product? Or will stone just not be used in the same way any longer?

Perhaps developers and designers and the public can off-set the carbon generated by the road and sea journeys of imported stone – or is off-setting greenwash, as some suggest? You can’t help questioning some carbon off-sets. Although tree planting is good if it’s the right tree in the right place, how long is it before a newly planted tree, even the right tree, becomes an effective carbon sink, I wonder?

There are carbon off-set companies to invest in that don’t plant trees. Some offer new technologies to bury, convert or replace carbon. Copenhagen city council has a huge carbon capture factory in the middle of the city and has turned the outside of it into a public park.

But even the leader of the council admits that becoming completely carbon neutral is a pipe dream. It would be too unpopular and effect too many industries, which means re-election would be difficult.

Economics or the future of the world? We have some decisions to make, you and me, about how we live, what kind of air we want to breathe, what we want to leave the next generation.

COP26 in Glasgow has helped emphasise that 2022 has got to be a year of change. We had to do it in 2020 for the worst of reasons. But carbon was reduced, air quality improved, the world was quieter, more peaceful, better in many ways. So I’m up for the sacrifice, for the change of lifestyle, work patterns and travelling less.

Are you, my friend? Is the stone industry? Is the world? We shall see.

Have a great holiday. And here’s to 2022. I’ll see you there.

Throughout the premises of Meister Masonry are signs saying ‘liberating stone’. Here owner Richard Heather and his team talk about how they are doing that.

Meister Masonry has just added two GMM Zeda 1600 CNC monoblocs to its already impressively equipped purpose-designed factory in the old Catbrain Quarry in Painswick, Gloucestershire, which the company has rented on a long-term lease since 1999.

Painswick limestone (as it was known) from the quarry was used for local churches and even went to London, some of it being used for fireplaces in the Houses of Parliament. Meister has supplied stone from some of the blocks that were left in the quarry for repairs at Parliament, but the last blocks were extracted in 1958.

Meister’s 1,900m² factory was formerly a Territorial Army storage unit. The company obtained planning permission to erect it in the quarry in 2011 and the first saws went in a year later. Before the building was erected, three water tanks were put underground capable of carrying 108,000L of water collected from the roofs of the building and off the concrete. An OMEC water recycling system supplied by New Stone Age delivers 1,200L of clean water a minute through the factory, as reported previously in NSS.

Meister Operations Director Martyn Cuff says until the factory was built and the saws were installed Meister had been buying the majority of its stone sawn six sides from UK and European suppliers. With demand outweighing the supply. Meister decided to bring the sawn six sides operation in-house.

It was always intended to be part of the company’s development to add more saws, although the latest 1600 Zedas were slightly delayed one way or another by Covid. The ‘1600’ refers to the rise and fall (Z axis), which is more than is available on the standard Zedas. The new saws join the previously installed GMM Zeda and Litox, Marchetti Axco and three primary saws – a 3.5m Van Voorden, a Benetti Fast belt saw and a GMM Diama with a 2m blade.

Buying the old TA storage unit kept the price of the new factory down, although it has been double clad to insulate it, both to reduce the noise and to stop water for the machines from freezing.

The quarry is surrounded by sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs) and a golf course, which has sterilised the reserves of stone, at least for the foreseeable future, and brings its own hazards of random stray golf balls dropping in – which encourages those working there to wear hard hats around the site when they are outside.

A new app is coming in April for checking all CSCS cards. 

The CSCS Smart Check app will mean all 2.1million cards displaying the CSCS logo can be electronically verified onsite using a smartphone.

The app gives employers a quick, easy and secure way of ensuring everyone has the right qualifications and training for the job they do.

The app will be free to use and available for Apple and Android phones.

Visit cscs.uk.com/smartcheck to find out more about the CSCS Smart Check app.

Benefits of the Smart Check app

Everyone working on a construction site should hold a card displaying the CSCS logo. And the cards should be checked regularly to ensure they are genuine and up-to-date.

However, with 38 schemes offering CSCS cards and many using their own (often incompatible) card checking systems, checking can be complicated, placing an unrealistic expectation on site managers to know every scheme and every type of card available together with the different verification systems used.

Having one app to check all cards electronically at the site gates will make life a lot easier. Whatever card is presented, if it has a CSCS logo it will be compatible with the CSCS Smart Check app.

Just checking

To make sure it is, CSCS is asking for some early adopters to help it test the app ahead of its official launch. If you would like to take part in a pilot programme email the project team at communications@cscs.co.uk.

Over the coming weeks regular progress reports will be issued and CSCS is planning several events in the new year to keep you updated. Further details of these events will be made available on the CSCS website.

David Coster, the plain speaking Director of Advanced Stone & Masonry Supplies, which sells Stain Proof and Tenax products in the UK, talks to Steve Murphy, hands-on MD of Planet Granite near Coventry.

David: Quartz, ceramic/sintered or natural stone?

Steve: For job satisfaction and creativity, natural stone. But for ease of manufacture and making money, 20mm quartz jobs all day long.

David: Straight off the machine or hand finished?

Steve: We use a Breton for polishing all our sinks. Everything comes off the machines probably to a standard that for many fabricators would go out. We have the tool manufacturers come and set up the tools for us using Zolllers. We pay extra for that. We still check the quality of everything and hand finish, so I would say probably every sink that comes from us is finished by CNC and still hand finished as well.

David: Physical templates or digital?

Steve: We have been digital templating with LT55s – or LT-2D3Ds, I should call them now – for six years. It was the only way to go really – completely digital. We can edit the drawings. The lads in the factory spend a lot of time on the CADs editing stuff, chopping bits up. If it was a physical template it would be highly inaccurate.

Customers – love them or hate them?

Love them and hate them. Both. I love some and I hate some. You get some customers who are an absolute nightmare. But then, fortunately, every so often you get really, really good ones that make up for it.

What’s going to be your next investment?

Software… for the smooth running of the business. There are various programs on the market now – Moraware, Stone Profit from Capterra, things like that – so we’re going to be investing in that. We have our own CRM system that we have custom built but we’re thinking now more about swapping over to one of the systems designed specifically for stone fabricators. CRM [customer relationship management] is about the whole process. We have our stock on there, our quotations, we’ve got our invoicing on it, our calendar for booking in jobs for fixing and templating. All the information of the whole business is on our CRM. But I think we’re going to move over to one that’s purpose built for stone, that’s tried and tested with bar codes and QR codes. Ours has got a bit clunky after so many years.

With COP26 and Net Zero companies are being told to cut their carbon footprint. Do you have any plans in place?

We are looking at putting solar panels on the roof. We recycle our water. Everything we do is trying to be low energy. The waterjets we have are very low energy.

Have you felt the effects of Brexit?

Steve: The price increases by all the suppliers. Everyone’s put their prices up. Getting stuff is getting difficult as well.

How do you use social media?

I just use Instagram, really. My handle is PlanetGranite_Steve. I post pictures when I see something I think is interesting and, being in the business, I appreciate – something that looks particularly good or a nice material or I’m proud of the lads for what they have done. I won’t put a white, L-shape quartz job up with a cut out for a sink and a hob because to me it’s not showcasing our ability, it’s just something we do. I probably post a picture once or twice a week, but I always try to make sure I took an all-right photo on my phone and it’s something to be proud of that the lads have achieved.

What sort of level of production do you achieve?

We don’t get easy jobs here. People say they’re doing 20 jobs, 30 jobs a week but I don’t believe for a minute they’re doing £6,500-£7,000 jobs. I think they’re talking about £1,500-£2,000 jobs. We do jobs that have window cills, full height splash backs, mitred end panels, all sorts. That’s completely different to an L-shape.

What trends do you see in materials. Have we reached peak quartz?

I definitely see natural materials making a come-back – most definitely over the past 12 months. Nice big granite islands and book-match wraps. We have just done a lovely Panda White and another one was Honey Onyx. That was nice. Blue Roma. I don’t how many Blue Roma quartzite jobs we’ve done but I bet it’s 20, maybe more. I think we might see some back-lit onyx making a bit of a come-back next year. And people using real marble. When you’re working with real Calacatta you can definitely see the difference. Have we seen the back of quartz? Yeah, maybe. The white quartz with a grey vein in it might go the way of the sparkly black. Maybe there’s going to be a change.

When you look to the future do you think it will be worse, better or the same?

The future is going to have to be better than the past two years. We spent the whole of Covid investing in a whole host of new machinery and new buildings. We’ve got our Robo Sawjet and two other robots, a bridge saw, another edge polisher, two more buildings. We have spent Covid preparing for coming out of it, really.

To complete the survey to help develop the most useful work experience ‘tasters’, CLICK HERE 

As reported at the Natural Stone Industry Training Group (NSITG) meeting last month (November), the Construction Industry Training Board is developing ‘taster’ work experience opportunities in construction for youngsters considering what route to take as they conclude their time at school.

Claire Wallbridge, the NSITG Training Officer, has asked stone companies, especially contractors, to help deliver these work experience ‘tasters’ by offering opportunities for youngsters to work on their sites.

All the youngsters will be older than 16 so they will meet health & safety requirements, and participating will enable contractors to meet 106 requirements for social values, which is useful as contractors are often required to include apprenticeship placements without too much consideration of what that involves for the contractor.

In order to develop these ‘tasters’ the CITB would greatly appreciate some input from the industry about how best to showcase opportunities for working in construction, all sectors of which are currently crying out for more employees.

It is looking for input to help it understand:

• the current offer
• what makes a good taster/work experience session
• how best to showcase opportunities in construction to the widest possible audience
• the challenges employers face when offering these opportunities.

The survey takes about 10 minutes to complete (perhaps a bit longer if you give particularly thoughtful responses). It is at https://citb.researchfeedback.net/s/jd3t7g.

CITB wants as many responses as possible in order to identify common themes. It will then develop ‘how to’ guides for tasters and work experience covering all the challenges identified. This will be available as a free download for companies to use in order to offer work experience and tasters.

Precisely what the pack will contain depends on the feedback, but it is intended to include all the information a firm will need to help it offer the best experience for the youngsters taking part, both to encourage them into the industry and to retain them.

The pack is likely to include a timetable or tick list identifying areas to be covered and providing a record that they have been covered. It might also include information about the facilities and considerations required for the youngsters during their placements.

But precisely what it includes is down to those who complete the questionnaire – and the more who do so the more the resulting material is likely to contain what you need. So, once again, the link to the survey is: https://citb.researchfeedback.net/s/jd3t7g.

Stone Federation Great Britain is calling on its members to sign up to a new 'Responsible Sourcing Pledge' to demonstrate their commitment to sourcing stone ethically and sustainably. 

The Federation wants its members to sign up to the Pledge to give the industry's customers another reason to turn first to Stone Federation members for all their stone requirements.

The Pledge requires firms to commit to an up-dated Stone Federation Sustainability Statement and to start their journey on the Ethical Stone Register.

The Sustainability Statement was first published in 2012. It laid out the Federation's position on sustainable procurement and detailed the expectations it had of its members in this regard. Now the statement has been updated and you can read the latest version here.

In 2016 the Federation launched the Ethical Stone Register in response to the Modern Slavery Act 2015 (which came into force in 2016) and issues of sourcing materials responsibly. The Register provides independent verification of a stone company's commitment to eliminating modern slavery from its supply chain and sourcing materials with environmental responsibility. 

Now comes the Responsible Sourcing Pledge, which is aimed at material suppliers, specifiers, consultants and contractors, because issues of ethical and sustainable sourcing require a commitment from the whole supply chain.