The masons saving Salisbury Cathedral
As the building’s 800th anniversary nears, Florence Hallett meets the team responsible for its ongoing survival
If you visit the Works Yard at Salisbury Cathedral, you will be greeted by a gentle rhythmic tapping that has endured for over 800 years. It’s the tap-tap-tap of the stonemasons who have been working on this site even before the foundation stone was laid on April 28 1220, and the craft itself has essentially remained unchanged.
“If a stonemason from 800 years ago turned up today, and you gave him a mallet and chisel, he’d know exactly what to do,” says Gary Price, 53, who as clerk of works oversees the care of the cathedral fabric.
Price was one of a team of about 60 masons recruited following a survey in 1985, which revealed that the spire and tower, a source of anxiety since time immemorial, were dangerously compromised. The west front, its carvings constantly exposed to the worst of the wind and rain, was also in a bad state, with the rest of the limestone masonry in varying degrees of disrepair, having been largely neglected since the 19th century.
It was Price’s father who spotted the advert for an apprentice stonemason in the Salisbury Journal. “I wasn’t particularly academic but I was good with my hands and I had a job fabricating doors. My dad said, ‘Son, I really reckon you should go for that job. If you don’t you’ll regret it’. He kept pestering me and the rest is history.” Today, Price is one of a team of nine masons nearing the end of the major repair programme which began all those years ago.
Today, the stonemasons come from all walks of life, all united by their love for the cathedral. Apprentice Joe O’Connell, 25, joined after a period of soul searching while furloughed from an office job. He spent the lockdowns making models of medieval buildings, and, realising how much he appreciated the sense of achievement and meditative space it gave him, answered a job advert.
As a history graduate, he is attuned to the long view: “The first apprentices here at Salisbury learned as I am doing now. There’s probably an unbroken line between me as an apprentice and Lee Andrews, the master mason, and the mason who trained him and so on, going back 800 years, to Nicholas of Ely.”
For the two female members of the team, historic precedents are shadowy at best: women and children were certainly labouring on the medieval site, but the precise nature of their work is largely undocumented.
Former banker Sarah Klopper, 50, says that when she started out 12 years ago she was advised that stonemasonry was no job for a woman. She is suitably dismissive: “It’s fine! There’s still that mentality with some men where they’ve got to lift twice as much as anyone else. But we have modern lifting devices, and lots of rules and regulations to stop us doing stupid things. We’re all capable.”
The particular perils of Salisbury Cathedral and its 123-metre-high ( just over 400ft) tower, supported by foundations that run just one metre deep, inspired William Golding’s 1964 novel, The Spire. In it, the Dean of the Cathedral is driven mad by his scheme to construct a soaring spire, against the advice of his master mason, and the story ends in tragedy.
Working conditions have undoubtedly improved since the 13th century, when masons were itinerant journeymen, rather than employees. Still, according to cathedral archivist Emily Naisby, it was dangerous work as recently as the 1950s. “There are some aerial photographs taken when the spire was being repaired, and the workmen are just holding on to the scaffold and waving – no safety helmets, no ropes.”
In 1762, the Salisbury Journal reported that four workmen dined at the top of the spire “on an elegant dish of bacon and beans”. Such sangfroid has endured. Price, a climbing instructor in his spare time, and whose job includes changing the cathedral’s aircraft warning lights, says that heights simply weren’t discussed at his job interview. “They didn’t ask me if I was OK with heights! But when I interview a mason now, that’s one of my first questions.”
With 19 of the 21 areas earmarked for repairs completed, the east end is the current focus for the head stonemason and his team.
The stones to be repaired or replaced are identified in advance, using a small brass or steel dowel to tap test each stone: a “nice ring” denotes good condition, a dull sound indicates a crack, which can admit water, freeze and then break off.
Crockets, small decorative elements embellishing exposed areas like gables and towers, are often worn beyond recognition, leaving the mason charged with the repair to come up with a historically informed, imaginative design. This is modelled in clay, and reproduced in stone once approved by the cathedral architect.
Even at the close range provided by scaffolding, recent repairs are not always easy to spot and the masons are proud of the way that their work quickly takes on the patina of the older stone. Even so, among some newer stonework I spot a dragon emerging from stylised foliage; nearby is Sarah Klopper’s signature motif, a nesting bird, its feathers plumped up against the wind.
When a decayed stone is removed, further discoveries are often made. For Carol Pike, 50, previously a fingerprint expert for the Metropolitan Police, this can be a magical moment. “It’s lovely when you take an old stone out, and you can see where they marked where they needed to cut. You see chisel marks that have been there for 800 years, and you know that your own work will outlive you and be there – hopefully – for another 500 years.”
Today’s masons continue to secrete messages in the cathedral walls, to be discovered by future generations. Currently waiting to be installed is a piece carved by Pike, and bearing the marks of each of the current masons, commemorating the local people who secretly assembled Spitfires during the Second World War. Once the piece is in place, the sculpture will be concealed inside a wall until the stone is eventually replaced, probably hundreds of years in the future.
While the impression is of a thriving workshop, serving a cathedral as seemingly immutable as the limestone landscape it is built from, Gary Price urges caution. “There are only 10 cathedrals in the country currently with works departments. Most of them take on one or two apprentices every three to four years, which inevitably means that although apprentices are being taught, there needs to be more funded training undertaken.
“As cathedrals and churches generally do not get built any more, the skills required to conserve our heritage could become few and far between.”
This, of course, would be a terrible shame. These masons do more than mere maintenance. Generations of them have dedicated their working lives to the cathedral, learning every inch of it, stone by stone. Without them, the gleaming vision of Salisbury Cathedral, one of the most beautiful sights in Britain, might not exist.
Today’s masons continue to secrete messages in the cathedral walls, to be found by future generations