I travelled with assistant Dan to Derbyshire this week to install a memorial stone to a very special 11 year old boy in the amazing 14th Century St Thomas’s church in Mellor. I’ll share some images of the memorial later in this post, along with a short film showing the carving process of ‘Oliver’s dragon’.

St Thomas’s Church, Mellor

Mellor church is fascinating. It is set on an ancient hill fort, and has stunning views across to Manchester, Liverpool and Snowdonia. Reading a bit about the history of the church, it seems there have buildings there since at least the 12th Century. The church itself has been restored at times, the tower was erected in the 15th Century and in the 18th Century it underwent major changes.

One confusing aspect to the dating of the church and previous buildings is that there is a wonderful Saxon font there. I’ve not seen anything like this before, it reminded me of Pictish carvings I have seen in Scotland. I thought that it was maybe 9-11th Century, but the consensus is it might be 11-12th Century, posing the question was there a church at this point, or was the font brought from elsewhere. I assume there was some form of earlier building here to house the font, perhaps timber. The Pulpit is apparently the oldest in Britain, and indeed perhaps the world, and is carved from one solid oak tree trunk, it is unique in England. It dates from the time of Edward II. It is octagonal in shape, with two of the sides forming the entrance.

The font was the most exciting thing to me, despite this incredible pulpit. I took some photos from different angles and created this frieze by stitching the images together to show the whole design.

Around the church were some really nicely carved huge sandstone ledger slabs covering tombs, overlooking the landscape. These must have been extremely wealthy people, only the richest people could afford a memorial in those times.. Next to the church was a ‘text’ural pavement made by re-siting old memorials, presumably at some point there had been a clear-out and reselling of plots. I remember seeing something very similar to this in Up Holland near ‘Skem’ (Skelmersdale). You’ll notice one stone to a stonemason with some of his tools used as ornamentation; mallet, square and compass, dividers and a spirit level.

Another really intriguing stone was fixed to the church, in a rather prominent position. A local guide told us a little about this memorial to Thomas Brierley. He was a wealthy local character, not particularly well-loved so it seems. He was a mason – not the stone kind, the secret handshake kind – there is a whole entry on wikipedia about this stone and the whole story, if you want to find out more. This excerpt gives some colour to his story:

“Thomas seemed to have some periods of illness and had recourse to the sick funds of the society. A number of members complained and made unpleasant personal remarks, as apparently his illness coincided with a slack time at Strines Printworks. It is said that he was “an honourable man and this charge grieved him sore.” (Other sources refer to him as one who was prone to display his membership of the masonic fraternity and to make it known that his worth was not sufficiently recognised.)”

There is masonic code (ciphers) on the stone, which I don’t recall seeing before. “The cipher on the headstone was presented as a mystery in books and newspaper articles right into the latter part of the 20th century. The headstone is actually written in five pig-pen variations. The text at the head of the stone says “Thomas Brierley made his ingress July 16th 1785, His Progress was ____ Years And his Egress___”. The headstone was never completed after his death (possibly because no one was interested and his father survived him only one more year and was of advanced age).

The cipher at the foot of the gravestone says “Holiness of the Lord”. The Pigpen cipher was used by Freemasons in the 18th century to keep their records private and surprisingly the cipher on Thomas Brierley’s grave seems to have a non-standard symbol for the letter “S”. It is possible the variation in the cipher is a clue to or a key to documents that he dealt with as the treasurer.”

Apparently he was despised by the locals and there was much fuss regarding his exploits and the stones he had made for himself. It’s fascinating thinking about all these stories and echoes that resonate around these old churches.

Oliver’s stone

In my work as a maker of memorials, I am painfully aware that some families have really awful situations to deal with, whether losing parents, siblings, children or friends. The majority of my work is making memorials for adults, but I have over the years made many stones for infants, children and teenagers.

It is often hard for families to even think of creating a memorial for a child. When life is tragically cut so short, what is there to say? What can be said? Words are not enough. The design of the stone must somehow reflect the fact that this is a stone for a child, and yet how? When I was approached by Ollie’s mother she shared some of his interests with me and showed me a website that has been set up to remember him, Oliver’s site.

This is a place where friends and family can upload pictures and share stories and watch videos of Ollie, I found this really powerful when I was thinking of designs for the stone. The site is also a place where you can donate to various charities that supported Oliver and his family through his illness. You can help other families in a similar situation.

Oliver and his twin brother George were really into dragons and Harry Potter. We discussed the option of reflecting this in the design and luckily the vicar was really wonderful and allowed this depiction on the stone. I worked directly from Oliver’s own drawing. It was really good that Oliver’s twin George made a trip with his mum to see me, and to see the stone being carved. A workshop visit can help prepare somewhat for the finality felt when the stone is installed.

I was able to make a stone version of this dragon inspired by Oliver’s own imagination, which felt like a wonderfully personal collaboration for me. I felt a connection with him by doing this. Below is a video showing the stages in carving this dragon. I have not shown the first stage which involved Dusty Dan cutting around the outline of the shape and grinding back the stone to leave this bold relief element before we hoisted it up onto the carving easel.

We were prepared for the trip to be less than straight forward as we knew the church was perched on a hill and the grave was down a grassy slope, and the vicar and churchwarden had previously said ‘it gets really slippery down there’. The stone was a rough natural York stone boulder and therefore quite weighty. Oh, and of course it snowed the day before we drove across from Norfolk. These adventures are sometimes quite daunting, but the family had been really helpful and there was a team of willing and attentive helpers. I have a really heavy duty trolley (it takes two to lift it) with large tyres and extendable handles which meant we could have a team of people sharing the load. There were two ’emergency brakes-men’ (chaps with big lumps of wood ready to jam the wheels should we start losing control) there were four ‘handlers/steerers’ and a ‘solid anchor-man’ – a poor chap with my tow rope wound around him tied onto the trolley. As always we imagined all the things that could go wrong, wore belt and braces and found it was quite easy and not worthy of the sleepless nights.

I think it is sometimes a very powerful landmark for the family to help ‘raise the stone’. It is not always advisable or possible but in this instance it would have been very difficult without their help. THANKS to everyone who helped us on the day.

Here are some pictures of the finished stone. You might spot the Harry Potter reference if you look closely.

It is always a privilege to make such a significant object in people’s lives. I hope this brings some comfort to Oliver’s family and friends. If you are able to donate to the charities that were so supportive to this family, and many others, please click here.