The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) has launched its strategy for the next five years. This strategy has been developed to reinforce SPAB’s role as the expert source of advice and skills development for people who care for our built heritage, ensuring old buildings are better managed and valued as an integral part of a low-carbon future.

By 2030, the organisation has pledged to share the SPAB Approach with new audiences whose love of history or ownership of a period property prompts them to discover guidance, training and expertise, while growing and deepening engagement with its supporter base of members, volunteers and enthusiasts.

This year, SPAB will complete its site-based training project repairing Old House, Boxley and sell the building. In 2027, the charity will celebrate its 150th anniversary renewing its commitment to seeing all old buildings better understood, cared for and protected, just as William Morris outlined in 1877 when founding SPAB.

Highlights of SPABs strategic focus will be:

• Emphasising the value of the SPAB Approach to sustainability, carbon reduction and energy efficiency in historic buildings.   
• Expanding the reach of its well-established educational activities and advice-giving.   
• Emphasising site-based learning through projects, training events and education programmes, to increase understanding and conservation skills.  
• Sharing the SPAB Approach with new audiences and widening reach through targeted membership campaigns and engagement activities. Ensuring everyone feels welcome and finds its help accessible.   
• Maximising SPAB’s potential to deliver public benefit through cultivating partnerships, compatible sponsorships and grants, and encouraging donations and legacies.  
• Building stronger connections across SPAB’s national branches, regional groups and specialist sections.  
• Maximising the potential of the 150th Anniversary as a celebration of SPAB’s illustrious past and as a launchpad for future activities.

For more information and to download the strategy, visit https://www.spab.org.uk/news/spab-strategy-2025-2030-summary

Ireland's dry stone walls have been officially recognised by UNESCO in its List of Protected Cultural Heritage practices. 

The longest continuous length of dry stone wall in Ireland, known as the Mourne Wall, is located in County Down and snakes a path 35km long across the rugged countryside. It passes over 15 summits of the tallest mountains in the region, known as the Mourne Mountain range, including the majestic Slieve Donard – the highest peak in the north of Ireland at 850m. The impressive wall is constructed entirely from local granite and took eight years to complete, with construction beginning in 1904.

This is the fifth Irish cultural practice to achieve this status with Uilleann Piping officially inscribed in 2017, followed by Hurling in 2018, Irish Harping in 2019 and Irish Falconry in 2021. 

Ken Curran, trustee of The Dry Stone Wall Association of Ireland wrote on the association's website: "The intangible cultural nature of how the knowledge has been retained, makes it vulnerable to loss without support for the active communities who are the bearers of the practice. The addition of Ireland to the UNESCO inscription is recognition of the many individuals and communities around Ireland still practicing dry stone construction and everyone involved in the safeguarding of the practice. 

"Having had Dry Stone Construction added to the list of countries on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity inscription is wonderful news for all of those communities."

The themes for the free-to-attend sessions that will take place in the Stone Show Seminar Theatre as part of this year's Stone Show and Hard Surfaces have now been announced.

Taking place from 7-9 May at Excel, London, the show's seminar programme features nine sessions over three days, giving insights into the key developments that will shape and transform the stone industry over the next decade, as speakers and panels explore decarbonisation, sustainable design, digitalisation, and more.

Wednesday 7 May

Natural Stone: The Low Carbon Construction Solution
This brings together some of the leading voices around the topic of using natural stone to decarbonise the built environment and explore some of the resources and studies that demonstrate the impressive sustainability credentials of natural stone.

2024 Natural Stone Awards: The Industry Choice
Each of the 2024 Natural Stone Awards category winners have gone into a public vote to find the industry’s favourite project. This session will feature presentations from the architects behind some of these award-winning schemes as well as the Natural Stone Awards: The Industry Choice.

Stone Federation Student Architect Prize
Stone Federation are passionate about inspiring the next generation of architectural talent to utilise the beauty, sustainability and versatility of natural stone. The Stone Federation Student Architect Prize will celebrate those designs which demonstrate the use of natural stone to deliver a sustainable project, grounded in its locale that addresses a current challenge faced by the built environment.

Thursday 8 May

Using the Standards to Deliver Sustainable Projects
This will look at the how the latest updates to the British Standards and industry best practice guidelines can help architects, designers and specifiers deliver more sustainable projects, and will cover recent revisions to paving design and internal cladding guidelines.

The Changing Face of UK Quarrying
Exploring how modern technologies and efficiencies have enabled the UK quarrying operation to deliver some of the lowest carbon products available globally. It will ‘myth bust’ some of the preconceptions that people might have about the practice of quarrying and UK quarrying and introduce some of the new products being produced by the quarries.

Structural stone: The New Horizon
Over the past few years there has been a growing momentum of research, conferences and articles around the impressive sustainability credentials of load-bearing or structural stone projects. Amin Taha’s 15 Clerkenwell Close project undoubtedly brought this way of using stone to the headlines. This session will unpack some of the exciting developments around this conversation.

Friday 9 May

Uncovering the UK’s Forgotten Stones
The UK is home to perhaps the richest geology on the planet, and this session will look at some of the schemes in place and being developed to fully utilise our indigenous natural stone as well as discussing the challenges faced of the commercial growth of the UK stone market.

Natural Stone and Retrofit: A Natural Fit
As part of the efforts to reduce the carbon impacts of the built environment, there is a fresh drive for clients to prioritise the retrofitting of existing buildings over demolition and rebuild. This session will explore some of the key topic around this conversation.

Emerging Talent Award: Celebrating and Inspiring the Next Generation of Stone Industry Talent
Alongside the presentation of the Emerging Talent Award, this session will explore what the industry is doing to invest in the next generation and discuss the challenges of training and talent retention and how the industry is looking to solve these.

To find out more and to register, visit: https://www.stoneshow.co.uk
 

The world has never felt so still, so calm and so quiet to me as the evening when I stood inside the central chamber of the long barrow at Fingask Castle in the Braes of the Carse in Scotland. The skies, the darkest tones of obsidian and the stars clustered as if guardians of the moon.

We are taught to fear the dark, perhaps we even fear the night and yet, when I turned my head torch off and looked up through the main oculus, I had the most visceral sense of being alive; an imperceptible sensation in my solar plexus. Underneath my feet, autumn leaves had gathered, windswept into an oval shape.

I’m standing in a structure that’s been built by a small team of men led by seventh generation stonemason, James Davies whose father, Geraint Davies is a master stonemason and designer of long barrows. Each barrow is drawn by hand and in 2014, Geraint completed the long barrow at All Cannings, Wiltshire – thought to be the first Neolithic-style burial mound to be built in the UK for more than 5,000 years. It can be described as a columbarium – with more than 200 niches and, within these, cremated remains can be placed in urns.

All Cannings is owned by Timothy Daw who was a historic property steward at Stonehenge and would often experience grieving relatives wishing to scatter loved ones ashes within this spiritual place. This of course isn’t allowed. He knew people wanted a more natural, less commercial way to remember the dead and a barrow made sense to him.

It was Geraint who persuaded Timothy to build the barrow from stone –  dry-stone laid honey-coloured limestone with a Sarsen stone entrance like the one at Stonehenge. It’s now a registered Druidic Place of Worship and those who visit can celebrate Solstices and Equinoxes. There are regular open days throughout the year and visits can be arranged. 

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has published a new guide for people fabricating and installing stone worktops. This guidance is designed to remind dutyholders and workers about the need to ensure that suitable procedures and controls are in place to help protect against exposure to stone dust and prevent workers breathing in respirable crystalline silica (RCS).

Stone workers are at risk of exposure to airborne particles of stone dust containing RCS when processing stone, including engineered stone, by cutting, chiselling and polishing. Over time, breathing in these silica particles can cause irreversible, life-changing and often fatal respiratory conditions such as silicosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer.

HSE’s guidance covers: competent staff and effective processes; pre-installation, on-site installation, and post-installation. The recommendations include:

• Installers should understand the risk from processing stone and how to use suitable controls.
• Worktops should be pre-fabricated so further processing on site is avoided.
• Water suppression or on-tool extraction with shroud and dust collector attached to an M-class vacuum should be used to control any dust generated.
• Respiratory protective equipment with an assigned protection factor (APF) of at least 20 (e.g. FFP3 face mask) should be worn when processing the stone.
• Cleaning should be by wet methods or dust class M vacuum to prevent creation of dust.

A link to the guidance is available here – Silica in Stoneworking – Work Right to keep Britain safe.

Mike Calcutt, deputy director at Health and Work, said: “HSE will continue to work with industry stakeholders to raise awareness of managing the risks from exposure to respirable crystalline silica. It’s important that businesses act now to ensure they comply with the law and protect their workers from serious lung diseases.

“Great Britain has a robust and well-established regulatory framework in place to protect workers from the health risks associated with exposure to hazardous substances. We want employers and workers to make sure they are aware of the risks associated with the activities they do, and that’s why we are sending this reminder.

“HSE’s inspectors have often found poor management of control measures including water suppression, dust extraction, equipment maintenance, cleaning and RPE provision. Employers should ensure suitable control measures are properly used and maintained.”

Employers have a legal duty to create suitable arrangements to manage health and safety and ensure they comply with the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 (COSHH) (as amended). Businesses should have in place effective control measures, including combinations of the enclosure and automation of processing equipment, use of water suppression and control of any mist generated and personal protective equipment such as RPE, to reduce workers’ exposure to the RCS.

You can sign up for regular updates from HSE on silica here.

Charlotte Shacklock met up with sales director Ant Collins of the Hardscape Group at the Public Space Expo where the company had created its very own village.

CS: Can you tell us how Hardscape Village came about?  

AC: The starting point is probably our 30th birthday which we are celebrating this year. We started out in 1994 and we became employee-owned around two years ago. We started exploring our profile and wanted to demonstrate ourselves as one of the bigger players in commercial spaces. We sit in quite a niche position and work with quarries and manufacturing partners to bring those materials through the design process into the built environment which not many can offer in our market. Through some research it was clear everyone who knew us in the industry were impressed by what we offered, but some people outside the industry either hadn’t heard of us or maybe thought we focused on small commercial and domestic garden projects.  

For many years we have operated right across all commercial spaces – public municipalities, city centres – it’s the core of what we do.  We spotted the opportunity to raise our profile at the Public Space Expo as we know the wider Futurescape event to be a good industry mixer and networking event, we’ve never exhibited here, but when they announced it would include the Public Space Expo, we were certainly interested. We were looking for key events to mark the anniversary and this seemed perfect for us to be the headline sponsor. The idea of creating our own village at the show evolved over time. How does the village differ from having a stand at the show? It’s hard for us to show things in a small space because there’s so much – even one or two stands doesn’t do it justice. I thought it would be nice to remove the mystique of who we deal with and allow the design community, clients – even our competition, to come and speak to our suppliers because we feel that strongly about the relationship we have with them. If you’re interested in Italian porphyry, for example – you can speak directly to the stakeholders of the quarry and factory who are part of the Hardscape Village. 

You don’t need a Hardscape representative there to listen to the conversation or hand out a business card or scan your lanyard. We’re experts through experience, they’re experts because the live and breathe those materials. We have manufacturers and quarry owners from Spain, Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands, Ireland and the UK here. So again, from that angle, there’s materials there that a lot of the market don’t know exist. There’s a material from eastern Scotland called Angus sandstone. Not many commercially seem to know what that product is and what it can do. But we have got samples here and the company has been proud as punch to be a part of it. That kind of reciprocal relationship is really helpful for us. People buy from people after all. 

How important is it to be ethical and sustainable? 
For over a decade we have been leaders in ethical trading and had every accreditation that you could wish for, to be able to explain that you can work directly with local authority in their procurement routes. Still, it took a pandemic to then shake our market to say we had already had these supply chain relationships but they were much lower volume than they are now. We are supported by the Stone Federation of Great Britain and the Landscape Institute and have a duty of care for where we source materials and are very selective. Cost is still crucial to a project, but it’s now not always number one priority. As an example speed is key now because the markets are busy. Lead time is an issue across the board. Carbon is a bigger agenda. More clients are saying “we don’t mind so much if it costs a bit more, as long as we can lessen our carbon footprint” and we can do carbon analysis of specifications. We can say to the client, spec A, which is European granite, as an example, based on quantities and where they’re from, will spit out X carbon. And we can compare materials along with relatable costs.  

The Hardscape Village was an opportunity to show the best of the industry, which we definitely achieved. And again, having some of the supply chains that aren’t physically here coming to visit just to say hello and thanks for showing the material, it’s fantastic for us because it’s a wide chain of people who support our business.  A lot of the quarries traditionally, certainly in Europe, they’re owned by families. I’ve known some of these families for 20 years. I’ve seen their children grow up and they’ve seen mine grow up – it really is personal. 

Blenheim Palace has announced that its annual deep clean of the stately home is underway in preparation of the monumental £10.4 million undertaking to preserve the Palace's historic architecture and safeguard its heritage for future generations.

Last year, the UNESCO World Heritage Site, which has been home to the Dukes of Marlborough since 1705, and one of Britain’s most iconic landmarks, announced its most ambitious restoration project to date, the major repair of the Palace roof.

This month, in preparation for these vital repair works, the cleaning of the plaster and gilded work on all ceilings is being prioritised. The team will be deep cleaning every corner of the ceilings plus monitoring and recording existing damage in case there are any movements due to the restoration works.

The annual deep clean process which takes roughly 6-8 weeks to complete includes everything from the 19 chandeliers, 18 clocks, 11 thousand books, over 1000 pieces of silverware, Boulle furniture, 38 pieces of armour, 40 busts and sculptures, plus tapestries.

The Palace team is using natural cleaning products, distilled water and no aerosol sprays, bristle brushes and old-fashioned elbow grease giving each item the special attention and techniques required for quality preservation. New technologies such as museum vacuum cleaners with HEPA filters, are also incorporated as each room is carefully stripped of all the furniture and artefacts and vacuumed from floor to ceiling.

Kate Ballenger, keeper of palace and collections, said, “Every year this is an enormous undertaking that, once complete, is the most satisfying feeling for the whole team of specialists that come together. Whilst it’s always a mammoth task, this year, we have a smaller window of time to complete our vital deep clean, ahead of the start of the roof restoration project.”

Alongside the restoration works starting, Blenheim Palace is introducing unique visitor experiences that provide exclusive access to previously unseen areas of the Estate as well as the surrounding Oxfordshire countryside. Three exclusive new experiences will also live at the landmark this year:

An all-new ticketed Roof Top View platform experience, providing visitors with never seen before breathtaking views over the Estate and surrounding Oxfordshire countryside.

This year, Blenheim’s renowned gardens undergo a transformation, too – with new features to be explored every season.

Blenheim Palace first opened its doors to the public 75 years ago to raise funds for essential roof conservation work. The project represents the most significant roof restoration in Blenheim Palace’s history. Every penny of visitor funds will contribute directly to this vital conservation effort, ensuring the project’s completion by 2026. In return, visitors will not only be supporting the preservation of this historic landmark but will also have the opportunity to immerse themselves in the rich history.
 

I’m not much of an early bird, I like to enjoy a few extra minutes in bed before starting the day. My mornings are all about simplicity. I’ll get ready with a cup of coffee in hand, accompanied by some classic rock from the 70s (my go-to for setting a positive vibe) and then head into central London to start the day.

I am usually found working at DBR’s head office, which serves as my base as marketing officer. In this role, I oversee our digital presence – managing social media, engaging with clients, and coordinating community engagement and sustainability initiatives. It’s a diverse role, and no two days are the same. What’s special about my job is that I also get to continue my work as a conservator. On some days, I’m tracking online activity and fine-tuning our messaging, while on others, I’m out on site, climbing scaffolding and working on one of our fantastic masonry conservation projects. It’s a unique blend that keeps me on my toes.

A typical day starts with checking how our social media posts from the previous day have performed, monitoring engagement levels, and seeing what conversations have sparked online. I have regular calls with various team members, discussing everything from preparing tender packages to arranging site tours and CPD events for our clients, colleagues, and supply chain partners. I usually listen to music or podcasts to keep the flow of the day going. Quite often, I split my time between the head office and our project sites, capturing photographs of our projects and the amazing people who bring them to life.

What continues to surprise me is just how varied and dynamic my role can be. At DBR, many of us have the opportunity to take on a wide range of responsibilities, which keeps the job feeling fresh and exciting. Being in a position where I can both market DBR and actively work as a conservator is incredibly rewarding. The company has grown from a specialist masonry conservation firm into a multi-million-pound principal contractor that can offer all aspects of conservation and restoration. I get to showcase that growth to the world, while still getting my hands dirty in the conservation work I love. It’s not a common career path, and I’m immensely grateful for it.

When I was younger I wanted to be anything that involved creativity or craftsmanship. I’ve always had an interest in history and different cultures, which led me to study cultural anthropology and archaeology, following in the footsteps of my grandmother. Through those studies, I developed a deep appreciation for the past and the ways in which we preserve it. That passion ultimately led me into the field of historic building conservation, where I get to combine my love for history with hands-on restoration work.

Something you might not know about me is that I’m certified to operate a forklift, mobile tower, and boom lift. This skill came in handy during a project in Somerset, where I had to step in as the plant operator when the main operator went on holiday. I was the only other certified person on the team. Some of my male colleagues were sceptical about whether I could handle the forklift, especially on a bumpy, uneven site, but I proved them wrong. It’s a reminder that sometimes the skills we least expect to use ends up being the most valuable.

One of the standout moments in my career was laser cleaning the terracotta sculptures on the façade of the Natural History Museum. Having a direct hand in conserving such a globally recognised landmark was an absolute honour. I first became certified in laser cleaning while working on sculpted marble in Washington, DC, and I never imagined I’d get the chance to apply those skills in London, let alone on such an iconic building. It felt surreal at times, standing on scaffolding in front of those magnificent sculptures, knowing that my work was helping to preserve a piece of history for future generations.

If I could give one piece of advice to someone considering a career in the stone industry, I’d say don’t let fear hold you back. When I first started in the industry as a conservation technician in the US, working on the marble of the US Capitol Building, I often felt overwhelmed. But I quickly found my footing, especially after discovering I was surrounded by a team of talented female conservators. That experience gave me the confidence I needed to push forward. Now, working with DBR as both a conservator and marketing officer, I’m proud to highlight the incredible women in our field; I love being able to post about these incredible women on the tools to promote the beauty, strength, and tenacity of women in conservation. My advice to anyone considering this career, particularly women, is to embrace the challenge. 

The stone industry may have traditionally been male dominated, but that’s changing. Pursue your passion, prove any doubters wrong, and show the strength and resilience women bring to the stone industry. There’s a growing space for us in this field, and it’s incredibly rewarding.