[Darren Mucolloch smith interview] The apprentice stonemason Interview

Date: 24/04/2014 Location: Drawing board office Length: [00:34:01] Interviewee: Darren Smith Interviewer: Andrei Allen Transcriber: Andrei Allen Note: [] Time Transcribed

[00:00:31] [00:00:53] [00:00:56]

Q. What were your hobbies A. Building bikes, models, making models, air fix models; I still remember to be doing that. A. Scouts. I was in the scouts,

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Q. What were your favorite activities at school? A. My favourite activities were, a sport, that’s it, and art as well?

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Q. Once you finished education, what did you do? A. I went straight into portoring at a hospital, when I left school, and I was there, I worked there for 5 years as a store porter, and a normal shift porter, so it was quite an experience.

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Q. What made you decide to become a stonemason? A. I think I decided to, not necessarily to become a stonemason, but, erm, my dads a bricklayer and I quite fancied doing what he was doing, but he sort of discouraged me from going into brick laying, but I did feel at the time in the early 80s that a lot of buildings were being defaced, and, just normal houses, sort of with, unsightly cladding, and nice sachet windows were being smashed out, and sort of tin windows, aluminium windows were being put in, and it was ruining just normal sort of dwellings, nice terraced houses, and I sort of felt that I wanted to contribute to try and put, do I would I could to halt that in a kind of way, I remember thinking that, I suppose stonemasonry is not directly linked to that, but I definitely wanted to do something to maintain the proper sort of heritage I suppose.

[00:03:40] [00:03:42]

Q. How did you feel with the decision that you made to do stonemasonry A. Erm, I think, er, the decision to get into stonemasonry was something I never regretted, the moment I started going to college up at great Titchfield street in London, it was the building craft college, building craft school, they did stonemasonry and carpentry there, but I was hooked on it straight away, didn’t regret it for a moment.

[00:04:20] [00:05:17]

Q. How does it feel to work at the cathedral as opposed to any previous job that you’ve done before? A. I enjoy working in the cathedral, because it’s a fantastic building, magnificent history, and definitely get a sense of that history when your working on the different parts of it, all the great sort of cathedral phases are incorporated at Canterbury cathedral, the places I worked at before were commercial work places, and that was all about providing stones for all sort of jobs, I mean it was varied, but a lot of it especially in the 8os was erm, at the time it was just for doing fairly thin cladding jobs for a lot of the building projects that was going on in London at the time.

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Q. What is your job title? A. My job title is senior stonemason setting out.

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Q. What does your job consist of? A. My job consists of really, its I suppose, erm, being pretty much responsible, solely responsible for all the templates being accurate enough for people to produce stonework that will actually fit back in the building, so it relies on accurate details taking, sketching, and dimensioning, and then setting out full size drawings, and then from the full size drawings, producing, full sized templates that fit each other, and then for all the other information to be passed onto the stonemason, and that is ultimately my roll, my responsibility

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Q. How long have you been doing this roll for? A. erm, I joined here, in 1989, so I’ve been in the roll I think, 6 months, after I started, I was asked if I wanted to do the setting out, and it was something that I’d done for a few years, in the commercial companies that I had worked for, so I accepted it.

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Q. How hard was it when you first came into your job roll? A. it wasn’t particularly hard coming into the setting out role, because I had that experience, and the sort of pressures that you have in commercial world, working for sort of private companies, you need to perhaps go out onto a site quite a few miles away, and be expected to take all the details in one go, and get back to the office and produce the templates, and then you wont have anymore influence on the job, so you’d just hope that the stones would be ok, somebody else would be fixing them, you wouldn’t be able to really give them much information, A. But for here, we’ve got a whole team of people, and I can revisit the, the area where we’re working time and time again, if im not happy with something, or if there’s any queries from the work, quite often you would take dimension, and you would come out, come back and try to produce a drawing from it, and things don’t tally up, and that quite often happens, so you can get back and recheck dimension, and that’s not necessarily something you could do if you’ve got to travel up to London, your expected to get the details, come back and that’s it.

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Q. Why do you have to do these tasks? A. Well, it’s my role, my job title, to do it, and.. it needs to be done because the stonemasons rely on adequate quality templates, to actually work the stone, you can’t just give them a few dimension or a few scraps of plastic, it all needs to make sense, and be accurate, and have some sort of cohesiveness to it, and it needs to sort of work within the system. A. So it means you need to fix sketches, for the people to put the stone in the building, the whole thing right from start to finished needs to be clear, and understood by everybody, so it’s an important, sort of role I think, at the cathedral.

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Q. What are the challenges you face with the continual work of keeping the Cathedral alive? A. The challenges of keeping the cathedral alive I think are, you’ve got to, there’s always the debate, A. The pros and cons, for sort of restoration against conservation, and it’s responsibility of all of us, sort of from the, from the, erm, surveyor to the fabric, you know, the architect down, to get that balance right, we’ve got a new surveyor to the fabric now who’s got slightly different ideas, I think to the previous architect, A. But I think every architect or surveyor to the fabric does the best for the cathedral, and it’s our job to work with the architect and support his decisions, and, I think what we’ve got to do is make sure that we don’t take out too much of the original work, just replace what is absolutely necessary, erm, where an are of the building might be failing and it might have detrimental effect on other stonework around it, but, to always erm, bare in mind the sort of responsibility to the building, and too the people that care about it.

[00:11:39] [00:12:18] [00:13:20]

Q. How much work is there to be done on the Cathedral? A. Well, again, I think the amount of work to be done on the cathedral is, dictated by the police at the time, and the money that there is available to do the work, you could say that there’s a lot of work that needs to be done, but you need to take into consideration the, the sort of agreement there is to do the work, and the philosophy of restoration and conservation, A. But there’s certainly areas of the cathedral that I’ve not got anywhere near, and I’ve been here since 1989, that, probably need attention, I’m thinking particularly on the north side, on the naïve, there’s quite a few stones, that, that need a fair bit of work doing to them, maybe replacing, that, risk of even falling from the building, little bits of stone fall from the building all the time, so it’s getting that balance right, but there’s certainly parts of the building that, that need, replacing and bell harry tower is another one, that’s sort of always put off because it’s such a huge part of the cathedral, but, at some point we’re going to have to revisit it, and do some careful restoration, A. I think, we like to think that the restoration that we do now, is perhaps a little bit more sympathetic, than, a lot of the restoration that had been done, from the early 1800’s onwards, where poor quality stones have been chosen, and, and wrong water mixes, wrong practices have been used. Hopefully, we’ve got a better approach to it, and the, the finished work hopefully blends in a bit better, and looks more pleasing,

[00:14:06] aesthetically pleasing than what’s been done before, with the right materials

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Q. What do you enjoy about doing this work? A. I think what I enjoy most about the work is, the daily challenge, and the, the sense of responsibility, and just I suppose, to know that It’s quite a difficult task to get stones to fit back into the building, when you’ve got all the previous restoration phases that you need to take into account, A. So you can never sort of rest easy, and relax, take things, erm, rest on your Loral’s you cant do that, you need to always, erm, keep your concentration, and sort of recheck work all the time, just so that, in my case, templates are being produced that actually result in a stone that’s going to fit back into the building, or a series of stones. That’s the challenge, and that’s probably the most enjoyable part.

[00:15:33] [00:16:28]

Q. What are you currently working on? A. We’re working at the moment on, the biggest job that, we’ve done here for many years I think, maybe for, I’m trying to think maybe for a couple hundred years or so, I cant think of anything in one go that’s this sort of scale of work, we’re working on the great south window, in the southwest transept, and erm, it dates from the 1420’s, but it was taken out in 1792, so perhaps that was the last time something on this scale in one go was done, when that was taken out, and we’re doing it now in 2014. So it\s a big job.

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Q. How do you feel about having the responsibility to do this job? A. The responsibility of doing the job, sometimes it bares quite heavily on me, you know, I do… i don’t say that I loose sleep over it, but its in my mind quite a lot, sort of my mind sort of, quickly returns to the task in hand, and the fact that ultimately I’m responsible for things fitting, and for all working, it’s all very well, all the upfront work that has been done erm, and all the input from the architects but, it’s the, it’s the 1 to 1 drawings, and the 1 to 1 templates that, actually been produced by taking details from the actual windows, not from a scale drawing, or peoples ideas, it’s, it’s just erm, exactly what’s there, and making, making it fit, and that is quite responsibility, and there’s quite a bit to go yet on the window, there’s a lot of hard work ahead.

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Q. The current job your doing now, how long have you been working on it for? A. We’ve been working on the great south window, since, erm, myself, since erm, November 2012, that’s when myself and another stonemason Emlyn Harris, was asked to start measuring up, so that we could inform the architects what position the window was in, with all its bode faces, and twists, and, to try and build up a picture, and that was used by the architects to, to sort of present the case for the kind of work that we thought would needed to be done with it, so it was just gathering information that could be used by the architects, it wasn’t until 5 or 6 months after that, that we was given the go ahead so that we could start measuring properly so that we could start measuring templates

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Q. How do you feel about passing on your knowledge, to the younger apprentices? A. erm, it’s a very good thing passing on knowledge to anybody I think, you shouldn’t try and keep it to yourself, not a big job like this, ya’ know, because the cathedral I think, erm, you need to share, the information and pass on things that you’ve, you’ve learnt all that experience, I think, coming in and working here each day, erm, it’s a good thing. A. The trick, tricky thing I suppose is normally, I’m so busy with trying to keep all the stonemasons working on stones. The sawyers cutting the stone and the masons working the stone that initially I felt that it would be pretty tough to actually find the time to run through what we’re doing and sort of, chaperoning people, keeping an eye on them. It has proved quite difficult at times, that’s why I’ve got sort of somebody helping with it, but eh, erm, you just gotta get on with it and, and try and sort of help out the best you can, that’s, that’s the role that I’ve been asked to do and, I think erm, we’ve got Sam Matthews and Jenifer Jordan who have gone through the level 4 and level 5 of the cwf, and I’ve actually relied upon them to do some setting out tasks, erm, and trusted them to do it, because recently years we’ve, we’ve taken on quite a bit of work, that I probably wouldn’t of been able to cope with by myself, unless you sort of stretch out the program, maybe more of a sensible approach I say, you’d stretch out the program and just extend it a little bit more, so your not overlapping all of the jobs, erm but, A. It’s a sort of crucial thing I think, to, to get as many people trained as possible, and it’s a sort of a unique erm job I think, doing setting out on big cathedrals, the restoration work is quite a difficult thing to do, because most cases everything is unique, every single template you produce is different. in most cases, and, that’s not an easy thing to sort of pick up quickly, and I think, gaining that experience, it does certainly help when other people are trying to take it up, you’ve got that knowledge, you know what to take for, what to look for, and I think, that’s the most crucial part of the teaching, is to know what you need to do to make the stone fit.

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Q. How long have you been a tutor at the cathedral workshop for? A. I think it’s about eh, 3 or 4 years that I’ve been a tutor at the cathedral

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Q. in that period of time, how may apprentices have you graduated? A. Just two at the moment, erm, the first couple, well the first couple years I suppose I was a tutor but I was a marker for the CWF, erm, so it’s been three years as a tutor, but erm, four or five years involved with the cwf when I was going around to other cathedrals, the first two years we didn’t have any students of our own on the course, but I was still down as one of the markers for the work, so I had to travel around to other cathedrals with another person who does setting out, John David’s from York minster, but erm, jen and sam did there level 4 level 5, and now Jake and Lewis are doing their level 4 onto level 5 next year, and I should think that erm, mirella and scott would like to do theirs strait after that .

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Q. What are the challenges faced with teaching the cwf? A. Time normally, erm, yea it’s just trying to get on with erm, all the responsibilities at the cathedral, and then trying to fit in another aspect, another role around that, it’s not easy, I think that’s the biggest challenge, even with the students themselves, thats still meant to be part of our working team,erm, but when their doing their cwf it takes much, pretty much all of their time, erm, so the way it work is, we try to have them doing things that are actually towards the cathedral work as part of the general work that we’re doing here. But it’s not always the case, sometimes we need to, erm, sort of conjure up tasks for them, it’s not ideal when it’s like that

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Q. What is your motivation for doing this work, what fascinates you? A. The work generally? Erm, motivation for doing what I do I think is erm, just eh, being part of erm, the history of the building, and obviously it’s going to be here for a long time after I’m, I’m not here, and I like to think that the work that we’re doing is going to A. Is going to improve it in a way, maybe improving some of the bad things that has been done in the last couple hundred years or so, but just being part of a long line of people that have tried to do there best on, on the building

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Q. How do you get on with all the other workers at the cathedral? A. I get on pretty well with all of the other workers I think, yea, it’s difficult to say, that ill name names, and too say you don’t like them, or I don’t like this, I don’t think that’s the case, I think eh, pretty much, yea obviously people have got, friends that their closer to then, then others I suppose, but as a whole we’re a pretty good workforce, and sort of mix and match and get on with the work…. Yea there’s no problem there.

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Q. I noticed this morning when you was discussing with your fellow workers that you guys are really passionate about the level of detail that goes into the work? A. Yea, I think erh, some of the people that work here are quite, eh, got quite strong opinions and I think it all comes from a good place, they definitely want best for the building, and some of the lads are young and pretty knowledgeable; clever lads, and they want to do the best for the cathedral, and they’ve got their own ideas that may not necessarily be in line with the sort of policy at the time, erm, ya’ know people have different opinions and different ways that think things should be done perhaps, but, I think it’s all good to sort of debate it anyway, and sort of try come up with something that works better, or that’s best for the cathedral

[00.30.34] Q. What does everybody get upto for lunchtime here? A. erm, a lot of people have their lunch down in the workshop downstairs, normally they play a game of cards I think, that seems to be something that goes on more than anything itself.

Q. A.