Commission

The Stoneyard

A year in the stoneyard at Wells, photographed for the cathedral’s own archive.

Cut limestone blocks stacked in a masonry yard

The chapter house needed a record of the work before the masons who were doing it retired. Two of the five had been on the building for more than fifteen years. They asked for photographs; I asked for a year.

The problem

A stoneyard photographs badly. It is dust, repetition, and long stretches where a person stands still and looks at a block. Every previous record of the work was a set of before-and-after shots, which is exactly the part that does not matter.

The set-up

One lens, one morning a month, and no photographs of anyone’s face. The last rule was Ellen Marsh’s, not mine, and it turned out to be the reason the series works.

The results

Twelve mornings, four hundred and six frames, thirty-one of them in the archive. The cathedral holds the originals; I kept the right to show them.

A mason’s hands steadying a chisel against a block of limestone — Six from the thirty-one. The chapter house holds the rest.

A mortise cut by chisel into a length of oak — Six from the thirty-one. The chapter house holds the rest.

Exhibited: Wells Cathedral chapter house in March 2026.

Nineteen years on one building, and she described it as keeping rather than building. I have not managed to unhear that.