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05 October 2022

Here’s Stone Mason, Daniel Cooper. With 34 years of experience in this traditional craftmanship, he is undertaking the painstaking work to restore the stonework at the Hull Maritime Museum.

Daniel is working on site at Hull Maritime Museum
Daniel carves each stone by hand

Hull Maritime Museum is made is 80 per cent of Ancaster Limestone.

There are 80 individual pieces of Ancaster Limestone to meticulously measure, carve and put into place around the exterior of the building.

The architect’s drawings identify the areas which are in need of attention.

Plans for the new stonework
Drawing identify where stone needs replacing

The pieces are measured and templates for each induvial piece of stone are made. It takes weeks to undertake this element of the work. Each template is individually labelled to identify the shape, location and size.

Templates are made for each piece of stone
The Stone Mason will then use the template to mark the line and areas that needs carving.

A black line is drawn on to the stone and then the Stone Mason will then get to work carving the piece of stone. It is done in a temporary onsite Bankershop. The Bankershop is the name of a Stonemason’s workshop, the Banker is the heavy duty work table for the stone mason to work on the stone.

This a RVT dust extraction system for off-site Bankershops
A range of tools are used

Specialist protective equipment is needed. The cutting then gets underway and it’s an extremely noisy process.

Daniel cuts the stone with precision
This is a three-metre piece of carved architrave, ready to be put in place.

Before this, Daniel needs to cut out the piece of damaged stone.

The damaged piece of stone is removed

Once the area is ready, the new piece of stone is ready to be put into place.

The area is ready for the new stone to be placed into position
The new piece is installed

80 pieces of stone will be cut, carved and installed. This includes 20 pieces of cornice, weighing 250kg and 60 indents, making sure the historic building looks as beautiful as ever.

The stone is carved and labelled ready for installation
20 cornices will be replaced and takes around two to three days to carve each stone from start to finish

It is thought this is the first time a Stone Mason has worked on the building since it was built in 1871.