King of the Purbeck Stone Age
Treleven Haysom has been quarrying stone on the Isle of Purbeck for over 60 years – now he’s written the definitive book about it
Eleven generations of Treleven Haysom’s family have been working with Purbeck stone in Dorset since 1698.
Still today, his Langton Matravers quarry provides the finest English stone for buildings from Westminster Abbey to Windsor Castle.
In late Jurassic times, around 150 million years ago, the sea covered what is now south Dorset with beds of limestone. First, Portland stone was laid down, followed by Purbeck stone, as the sea turned into a lagoon. The uppermost bed of all was called Purbeck Marble.
Throughout the Middle Ages, hard, polishable stones, as against softer stones, were called marble and the men who worked them marblers. In medieval England, Purbeck was synonymous with marble in the same way Carrara in Italy has been associated with marble since the Renaissance.
Strictly speaking, Purbeck Marble isn’t in fact marble. Today, scientific geology reserves the term marble for a particular group of metamorphosed limestones.
Still, Purbeck Marble was hugely prized here from the second half of the 12th century. The zenith occurred in the 13th century, before a late-14th-century reduction and an almost complete fizzling out by the end of the 16th century.
The high point is Henry III’S lavish use of Purbeck Marble in his rebuilding of Westminster Abbey in about 1245, complete with the famous Cosmati Pavement and Edward the Confessor’s shrine, where more exotic types of stone were set in Purbeck Marble.
Purbeck Marble was used at Canterbury, Chichester, Durham, Lincoln, Ely, Winchester, Rochester, Exeter and old St Paul’s Cathedrals. York Minster has Purbeck details that may even be reused Roman work. Later, Purbeck stone was exported as far as Newfoundland and Barbados.
St Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln in the late 12th century, said Lincoln Cathedral ‘is supported by the precious columns of swarthy stone [Purbeck Marble], not confined to one sole colour, nor loose of pore, but flecked with glittering stars and close set in all its grain. Moreover, it may suspend the mind in doubt whether it be jasper or marble, yet for marble of a most noble nature. Of this are formed those slender columns which stand around the giant pillars, even as a bevy of maidens stand marshalled for a dance.’
In 1220, both Salisbury Cathedral and Westminster Abbey used Purbeck lavishly. Approximately 15,000 tons of Purbeck were used at Salisbury,
combined with about 70,000 tons of the local Wiltshire stone.
Although Purbeck went on being used at Winchester until about 1340, Exeter until about 1342, and Westminster Abbey until even 1500, the tide was on the ebb.
Today, we are still using Purbeck Marble for some of the greatest buildings in the country, often in the same places it was used in the Middle Ages. When the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries were opened at Westminster Abbey in 2018, we used Purbeck stone.
Purbeck stone was also used in London’s 12th-century Temple Church. After the war, my father replaced the ancient Purbeck columns there with modern ones. Each consisted of four separate drums linked at the base, collar and cap, arranged in a circle, supporting the triforium, clerestory and roof of the round nave of the church.
Other great buildings where we’ve installed Purbeck stone in recent decades include St Paul’s, Windsor Castle, Hampton Court, Dover Castle, Knole and these cathedrals: Ely, Canterbury, Rochester, Salisbury, St David’s, Chichester, Lincoln, Canterbury, Portsmouth, Peterborough and Exeter.
These days, to cut stone, we use diamond-tipped blades, introduced after the Second World War. The blades revolutionised stonework. A yard at Chesil in Dorset was equipped with steam saws by 1877, using sharp sand to cut the blocks, some 30 years or more before Purbeck’s first powered saw.
A telling account of old practices was given to me by a Mr Weeble who began work under his grandfather, Mr Beck, in Winchester in the 1930s. They were still employing hand-sawyers then – mostly army pensioners. The sawyers sat in a little, weatherproof, sentry-box-like shelter, pushing and pulling the saw to and fro all day, cutting blocks up to six or seven feet long.
Water was fed into the cut from a barrel over corrugated roof sheets laid horizontally, which served to spread the trickle, flushing sharp sand down onto the blade to make cutting more effective.
Their yard had a pub close by. It was said that, on one hot day, a sawyer managed 20 pints of bitter!
In the 19th century, one Charles Edmunds, starting as a boy at Hedbury Quarry on the Isle of Purbeck, became the foreman of masons on Manchester Town Hall – Victorian Gothic at its height.
My father would say, with a twinkle in his eye, ‘They all went away and, if they were any good, they stayed away. If not, they came back.’