The stonemason who works in centuries

Ellen Marsh is a banker mason at Wells, nineteen years into the same building. I went to ask her about patience and came away with a sentence that has reorganised how I think about my own desk.

You are not building it. You are keeping it. Nobody hands you a finished cathedral and nobody takes one off you either.
Ellen Marsh

In this episode

1. 03:40 Why a banker mason never signs the stone, and why that is not modesty.
2. 11:15 The moulding that took two days and will never be looked at directly.
3. 24:02 On working in a cold room from October to March.
4. 38:50 What she would do differently with forty more years.
5. 51:30 The apprentice question, and who pays for the first winter.

Mentioned

• The Wheelwright's Shop by George Sturt
• The Heritage Crafts Association red list of endangered crafts
• The chapter house record, now in the cathedral archive

Recorded in the banker shop at Wells, with a compressor running two doors down.