Stone Fireplace, Stone Staircase, Limestone Fireplaces

Have you been to any weddings recently?  It’s an expensive job to do properly these days, and if neither the bride or groom have some country pile in their families, then the choice and cost of venue is the first thing to consider. You can of course go to a local hotel; country house; or private residence that is available for weddings. We’ve been involved in the restoration of several such venues over the last few years. Installing large stone fireplaces in dining rooms or a flight of stone stairs in the garden… both of which are perfect for some of the wedding photos! These venues are often the cheaper option as they are effectively permanent sites, and they have permanent kitchens and are ‘geared up’ weddings or similar events.

Another choice is a tent or marquee on your garden. This can be as grand or as basic as you want. In summer you can risk less substantial tents and maybe get away without extra heating, and if your garden is particularly beautiful, then you need not be so extravagent with the tent.

One of our masons is getting married next Spring. He and his girlfriend are not completely decided, but they think they would like a tent here at the stone yard. We have plenty of room, and the intention is to build a big false wall and massive stone fireplace into one end of the tent so it looks like a castle! It’s a great idea, and if we do it here on site it would not be too difficult.

Have you ever heard of it? I was down in Kent a few weeks ago measuring up for a customer’s new stone fireplace and several stone mullion windows, and they told me about it. It’s an area of marsh opposited the town of queenborough, and in the 19th centuru when ships used to come up the river (from all parts of the world) they were not allowed to dock in the port of London with any crew or passengers who had any sort of disease. Effectively, this was a sort of quarantine island.  Not only did they bury the bodies of the victims, but they also sent those suffering from the diseases: Cholera, smallpox, etc. There were many prison ships (hulks) anchored in this area, and the cramped, dirty conditions, were ideal for the spread of these diseases.

The island is now being eroded quite rapidly by the tides, and coffins and bleached bones are quite often exposed on its shores. (quite gruesome) It is still know as Deadmans island.

Our customer was relatively new to Kent and intends to do more research into the whole history of the Medway and that island of the dead. His house was originally the home of a medway pilot, and was still used as such until about 50 years ago. It’s simple but solid, and has large rooms. We are going to make two large stone fireplaces for it, and replace the weather damaged stone windows on the Northern elevation.

Salmon fishing in Scotland! I’ve just been up there near Perth staying with some friends, and had my first ever go at catching a Salmon. (and failed)  We stayed just up the road from Blair Atholl, and my intention had been to go and do the tour of Blair Castle, and do my usual search for interesting stone fireplaces, but I was so taken by the pursuit of Salmon, that I never got round to it!  That area of Scotland is incredibly beautiful.. lovely hills and forests and stunning wild rivers. There are many big estates up there, and it makes one wonder what the ‘original’ inhabitants thought when they began to settle there? Did they just wander into that stunning naturally beautiful landscape, and decide to stay because of its beauty, or was it because the rivers provided food and water (assuming they weren’t relying on catching salmon with a fly!)  Fortunately, the valley has not been spoiled by human settlement, and is still breathtakingly lovely.

My research to find a stone fireplace in the area, will have to wait until my next trip, as I’m sure I will go again… to try and get a Salmon. We saw lots jumping as they swam up the river, and there is a ‘fish ladder’ at Pitlochry by which the spawning salmon can negotiate the river where it is now obstructed by the dam.

There are many large and lovely houses in the area, no doubt again, because wealthy lairds and land owners wanted a residence in this beautiful area.  We also passed Stirling Castle on our journeys up and down. Stirling Castle has several very old and impressive stone fireplaces, and also some substantial stone stairs and external stone staircase. I had also hoped to have time to go and see those, but I’ll have to go for longer next time.

Going round the World… what a brilliant adventure that must be, no matter how you do it. Sailing I suppose is the one most people think of… not necessarily the Robin Knox-Johnstone none stop way perhaps, but rather a more leisurely route, and taking a lot longer! You could of course do it by flying scheduled airlines, just get an open ticket and stop in as many places as you liked as you did your full ‘loop’.

My preference would definately be to do it on land. That way you do see all the countries on your route, and you’re completely immersed in the culture of the places you pass through. I could be searching for examples of stone work the whole way round, and would no doubt need a trailer to carry all the stone samples that I would inevitably find! I’m certain I’d see some outstanding stone stairs…. probably ascending a temple in the Cambodian jungle, and perhaps I’d see some amazing stone fireplaces in Russia, or China?

My ideal mode of transport would be on a motorbike, but I wonder if I’d be fit enough, as biking can be exhausting. The good side is that you really are in the countries you pass through, you get the smells, the heat and the cold, and you are face to face with the people you pass. Second choice would be in an 4×4…. a bit less tiring, but not quite the same level of adventure. I’ve read of people that have done it on bicycles! (I bet they weren’t going round looking for stone fireplaces!)

Time of course is most peoples’ limiting factor… more so than money in most cases, as plenty of people have done a ’round the world’ trip with little or no money. If you’ve got a family, or a demanding job, or your own business, then it’s always finding the time that’s the biggest problem. One of our masons is driving to Tashkent next spring, to meet his father driving the other way from Peking… I hope they don’t miss each other! We’ll miss him, because he’s an outstanding mason, and works on our most intricate stone fireplaces, but as he says: He can work on a stone fireplace anytime, but he may never get a chance again to do this trip!  I agree with him!

Could you be a roofer? We often get customers who need stone work to go on their roofs. It may be verge cappings; stone courses on chimney stacks or maybe stone corbels. All involve going up quite high! Even on scaffolding I have to say I don’t really like heights, but the guys that do it regularly seem to have no concerns about the height they’re working at. I prefer to stick to the stuff at ground level, so I’ll go inside and measure up the customer’s stone fireplaces, while one of the masons goes up on the roof. We have one fantasticly skilled roofer.. he is a real perfectionist and any roof done by him is a work of art. He also skips around on the roof like he was on the ground! I’m sure it’s not that he isn’t scared of the height, but more that he can control that fear, whereas I’d be gripping white-knuckled to the scaffold hand rail.

We fitted a lovely contemporary stone fireplace to a specacular penthouse flat in London’s docklands recently. It was on the top floor, and had stunning views of the river and the city. The sitting room (where the stone fireplace was fitted) had floor to ceiling glass, and if you walked right up to it, it was like you were floating in the air. It was incredible view, and one could sit there for hours just gazing out, but I’m not sure I could live there every day, as it is slightly scary.

The stone fireplace of course did not have a ‘proper’ fire in it. It was going to have one of those gel things that don’t need a flue and don’t give off any fumes or noxious gasses. I’m not sure how they work, but we’ve had a few enquiries about them recently, so I better find out some more details.

It is autumn now isn’t it? Well all the stone fireplaces were covered in poplar leaves in the yard this morning, so I figure that signifies autumn? Mind you, because it’s been so dry for most of the summer, the trees are losing their leaves earlier than normal.  The temperature though is definately autumnal, and all but a couple of the hardiest masons have moved their work benches back under cover. The stone fireplace that one is working on is so long (wide mantle) that we can’t get the forklift into the workshop, so he better finish working on it this morning.

On Wednesday I’m going to Scotland to see a few things on the Blair Athol estate. I’m hoping there are some good examples of stone stairs in the house I’ll be staying in, and some good stone fireplaces too perhaps. It’s a beautiful part of Scotland, but I’ve only ever driven through before, so it will be nice to be able to spend a bit of time exploring.

We’re having a new compressor fitted in the factory this week. We use compressed air tools quite a lot these days. There are good for grinding and cutting stone blocks, and the compressed air is very useful for blowing the vast amounts of stone dust off whatever you’re carving at the time. Things like compressors are so cheap these days. I remember when we set up the workshop in 1977, we bought a big old compressor, second hand, and it cost about £1000, but now you can get a fantastic, reliable and well made maching for about £500! No doubt made in China or similar, but non the less, and very good machine for a very reasonable price.

Have you got foxes near where you live?  And it doesn’t have to be rural these days, as I think there are just as many city dwelling foxes as the ‘original’ rural ones! We’ve got a family of foxes down the field at the rear of the stone yard. Now that all the crops are in, we see them nearly every day. When we were doing all our stone fireplace work outside in the summer, we saw the cubs playing quite regularly. They seem to be able to distinguish between those that like them, and those that don’t!  At the rear of the yard, we have an area where we carve all our largest stuff: big stone staircase, and very large stone fireplaces etc. The mason that works there most of the time is a real animal lover, and he started leaving scraps left over from his (ample) lunches to try and lure the foxes closer. Well it backfired initially, as on the very first morning after he’d done that, the fox or foxes had left him a present too on the mantle of a stone fireplace, and it took him an hour to clean it off, and it was very smelly!

Since then he puts a sheet over whatever stone fireplace or whatever he’s working on, but the foxes got so used to him leaving snacks for them, that they could be seen coming up the field in late afternoon ready for their little treat!

Of course they’re not just cuddly animals, and if you’ve had your chicken coop cleared out by one of these very efficient hunters, then you would not be very fond of them. They are also extremely prolific, and they seem to have become more so in the last few years. Perhaps the hunting ban had something to do with that? The fact remains though, that they are a beautiful animal, and we love seeing them here while we work!

Do you like motorcycling? Have you ever done any or been a passenger on one? I’m an avid biker… have ridden them for years, and love every minute of it. When I do my stone fireplace research trips (in the summer) I sometimes go on my bike, and camp as I travel round France or Spain, or Italy. It’s a great way to travel, and you really ’see’ the countryside you’re travelling through. The great thing about biking in Europe is that relative to England, the roads are just so quiet! Also, I prefer to go on the lovely winding A and B roads and avoid motorways, and then you really do see the real country you’re travelling through.

The disadvantages are that I take quite a bit of camera equipment with me to take pictures of the stone fireplaces that I may find, and also, I sometimes find little intersting quarries, and I like to bring some stone samples back, but there’s only so much I can carry. I normally have to resort to posting the stone samples back, but there’s always the risk that they never arrive.

The advantages though, far outweigh any downsides, and they make a research trip for stone fireplaces, into a real little adventure, and a holiday. I’m planning a trip to Romania next Spring. There are some fantastic old buildings in that country, and there are sure to be some fantastic stone fireplaces within them! A fellow ‘biker’ is going to do the trip with me, as he’s always wanted to visit Romania, but I’m not sure he realises that his panniers will be full of stone samples when he returns!

Are you a coffee drinker?  I’ve been converted over the last 4 or 5 years or so. Several of our masons are French, some Spanish, and we use some other European ‘helpers’ when we’re very busy. They all have one complaint in common when it comes to England: It’s hard to get a really good cup of coffee! These guys LOVE their coffee: The work out in the yard, carving the stone fireplace or stone stairs, or whatever we have them making at the time, and they always seem to have a cup of black coffee nearby!  They hate all the Starbucks type stuff that we have over here, and I must admit I do too. Have you ever tried a Starbuck’s Latte?….. It’s like a coffee milk shake it’s so thick.

These guys get their own coffee beans, grind them up, and make it in a pot that looks like it should be on a cowboy’s campfire. It smells fantastic though, and in the morning, I love the smell that drifts across the stone yard when they’ve got a brew on!

Surprisingly, they told me that Nespresso coffee is very good, in the absence of them being able to get any of their ‘proper’ stuff. One of our masons, who does most of the onsite fitting of our stone fireplaces, carries one of the small nespresso machines in his van, so that he can make his own on site… their very fussy these masons!

Today it’s raining very hard here, so everyone has pushed their workbenches into the workshop. We’re working on a very large ‘Cromwell’ fireplace at the moment for a barn conversion on Cannock Chase, which is an ancient forest in Staffordshire.

We’re also working on another Limestone fireplace for a converted church in Northampton. The stone fireplace is very gothic, and given that it’s in a church, will be quite ’spooky’ Not sure I could live in a church!

If you’re renovating or improving your house, not just putting in one of our stone fireplaces, then you may be considering a new or updated kitchen?  The choice is bewildering! There are all the high street choices of B&Q, Homebase, Wickes etc, and then there are the hundreds of independants, and every area has it’s own specialists and small joinery companies that can turn out some very impressive products. As with stone fireplaces though, If you go to a specialist company, then you’re more likely to get a product designed to suit your particular house/style, than you are if you go to the off the shelf ‘high street’ stores. The latter can of course be fantastic value, and by adding a few extras, you can even give these standard kitchens a bit of a ‘custom’ look.

In the case of our stone fireplaces, we can actually offer you the benefits of both Worlds.  Our masons can make you a unique stone fireplace, designed specifically to your requirements and style, and yet because we’re highly efficient and with very low overheads (no flashy showrooms) we can produce such a stone fireplace for an incredibly good price. You win both ways with manorhouse Stone!