Sidney's Place: SET IN STONE

The distinguished architectural writer Alec Clifton-Taylor was a particular authority on the materials used in Britain’s buildings and certainly Britain is made more beautiful by the use of some lovely native stone. English cathedrals, parish churches and some towns are often particularly blessed and while the modern world is much dominated by brick and concrete, stone remains the finest of materials, the material which lasts centuries and you cherish in “the deep heart’s core”.

I was raised in Aberdeen and had the good fortune to live my youth in a majestic Victorian house in Rubislaw Den South, one of the finest city streets. The houses there and in much of the city were built of the famous grey, sparkling Granite extracted from Rubislaw Quarry nearby – every day one heard the stone- blasting in the deep quarry, becoming exhausted and closed since 1971. I loved the granite and our house sported two fine cylindrical columns framing the entrance and in the 1960s I used daily to touch the columns and gave thanks for the privilege of living in such splendour.

Rubislaw Den South houses

Aberdeen, the Granite City

There was a great Victorian vogue for Aberdeen Granite on tombstones (not always in sympathy with earlier tombs) but it is still used as an expensive building material often as a solid facing for banks, subtly concealing the bankers’ spines of jelly and feet of clay!

Edinburgh’s native stone is a variety of hard Sandstone, most famously from the Craigleith quarries, which adorns much of the New Town and was exhausted by 1895. Register House and Charlotte Square are clad in this stone and architect Robert Adam was so fond of this elegant material he transported it to London for Chandos House, Queen Anne Street in 1771.

Chandos House, London

London has no local building stone and has imported stone for centuries. Kentish Ragstone, a rough, durable limestone, is plentiful and was much used in medieval Westminster Abbey and in many other churches and to good effect in Kent itself for the Archbishop’s Palace at Maidstone.

Archbishop's Palace, Maidstone in Kentish Ragstone

Much the most famous stone to be imported into London was Portland Stone, from the Jurassic Portland Island in Dorset. Christopher Wren moved tons of this stone to London by barge and gave us St Paul’s Cathedral among many others. The Cenotaph erected by Lutyens in 1919 in Whitehall is also in gravely respectful Portland Stone.

St Paul's Cathedral in Portland Stone

The Cenotaph too

Perhaps the finest building to be erected in England in the 20^thcentury was the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool, designed by Giles Gilbert Scott in 1903 and not completed until 1978. It is a colossal building with stunning vistas, much enhanced by the Rose Sandstone used, diffusing light, colour and shadow throughout from its matchless elevated position overlooking the city.

Rose Sandstone for the Anglican Cathedral, Liverpool

There are many other hotspots of cherished stone – Cornwall has its Granite (which I find rather too dark), Wales rejoices in Slate, while unpromising but ubiquitous Flint can look very well if dressed and combined with another stone as in the exterior of the Suffolk churches of Lavenham and Long Melford.

But I want now to move on to my, and everyone’s, favourite English stone, the mellow Oolitic Limestone associated with Lincolnshire, Oxfordshire, the Cotswolds and Bath.

In years past, before the motorway network was developed, we used to drive from Scotland to London by the AI and a memorable stop-over was Stamford, Lincolnshire. A splendid historic town, with surviving 17^th and 18^th century buildings Stamford’s local stone is much in evidence here as it is at Lincoln Cathedral further North.

Limestone delights in Stamford,

For 7 years I lived in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds in semi-retirement, surrounded by some of the loveliest villages in England. The gentle Cotswold escarpment contains unspoiled settlements and the stone is so distinctive.

Stanton, Gloucestershire

Chipping Campden, almshouses and church

Descending West you soon get to the astonishing city of Bath with its renowned stone and glorious architecture. However to my mind Cotswold stone is best displayed at the University of Oxford where I misspent 3 highly agreeable years in the 1960s.