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Preservation of our history
DARLINGTON-based Stone Technical Services has signed a £250,000 contract to help preserve much-loved historic buildings in Yorkshire.
The news follows warnings earlier this week that millions of stately piles, including Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, as well as churches, and domestic buildings, would fall around the nation's ears because of a serious shortage of specialist workers.
Dave Stone, who established the company with brother Grahame in 1998 and now employs 18 staff, said it was hard to find young employees for the physically demanding jobs of steeplejacking and stone masonry.
“Finding young kids to take an apprenticeship and stick at it, even in our localised trade, is difficult,” said Mr Stone.
“We have had five or six over the years and retained three. I could do with two more squads of steeplejacks and stone masons over the next few months, but funding them is the difficult exercise.”
According to National Heritage Training Group, many more stonemasons, thatchers, dry stone-wallers and slate roofers are needed for restoration projects such as Stone’s recent commission from Calderdale Council to restore Wainhouse Tower in Halifax. The 75m former mill tower will be reopened as a public observatory. The firm will also be working on the 13th century Heptonstall church tower near Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire.
And within the next two weeks it will begin repairs to St Patrick’s steeple at Patringham near Hull where the February earthquake weakened the structure and dislodged pinnacles, closing the church.
Stone, which works with English Heritage and the National Trust is the appointed contractor managing structural and high level maintenance repairs and lightning conductor installations at St Paul’s Cathedral, also recently won a £70,000 contract to restore St Lawrence’s Church, York.
