Island Life Magazine Ltd October/November 2007 | Page 35

FEATURE
One of the oldest stone buildings on
the Island is Carisbrooke Castle and the
first reference to it is in AD 1136 when the
anonymous chronicler of Gesta Stepheni
writes that it was “very finely built of stone
and very strongly fortified”. The original
wooden palisade fortress had been
built in a hurry because the Normans
expected to be attacked at any time
and the new castle was built mainly of
Greensand, a type of sandstone, which
was quarried and brought from a scarp
at Gatt Cliff, the old name for Gatcombe.
The same quarry was used until 1921.
When Isabella de Fortibus came to the
castle in 1262, she began rebuilding and
extending the residential buildings. Henry
Long, reeve of the castle, kept an account
of the masons she employed and after
her death, stonemasons are mentioned
again in a record of payments made to
them during the years 1318-19 for the new
brattices they fitted to the ‘great tower.’
Later “Chardges of the masons woorke
of the southeast and southwest knights”
appears in the accounts for 1601-02 (the
knights were the small artillery bastions
added later to the existing fortifications).

life

Photo: Stonemason
Dave Crouch putting
the final touches to the
new gate pillars at
Carisbrooke Cementery.

The original Carisbrooke
Castle was a wooden fortress
which had been built in a hurry
because the Normans expected
to be attacked at any time
Inside the castle gatehouse there’s a
stonemason’s mark on an ashlar block
in the wall. Stonemasons often carved a
personal symbol on each block of stone
to mark the difference between their work
and that of other stonemasons and it also
helped the master mason to estimate
the amount of work done by each man.
When Sandown Fort was being built
in 1652, in spite of masons being paid
1s.4d per day compared with a labourer’s
pay of 9d., the two deputy lieutenants
responsible for controlling the finances,
Sir John Oglander and Sir Edward Dennis,
found it difficult to recruit workers.
Their records show a note of payment
“to Smugg for goinge with a warrant to
Shorwell to presse Masons for the kings
worke.” Smugg’s errand must have been
successful because the following week two
masons, Thomas Davis, senior and junior,
arrived to work on the site. Apparently
the two men had discovered a large
hoard of Elizabethan shillings hidden
in a barn at Newchurch the previous
summer so a stonemason’s wage must
have seemed miserly by comparison.
Sadly a lot of the buildings created by the
architect, John Nash, on the Island, have
either disappeared or been modified. The
Guildhall in Newport, built on the site of
the old Town Hall and Cheese Cross and
completed in 1819, is an example of his

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work though a tower was added to the
building in 1887. In a letter to a Mr. Sewell
dated 24 February,1814, Nash warns
against the extra costs for the building
and urges Sewell to appoint a Clerk of
the Works to oversee the work. Contract
Number 3 for the Masons’ Work stipulated
that “the plinth of the arcade all round to
be of Bath stone, those under the piers
the arches to be each in one stone; the
moulded fascia under the columns to
be of Bath stone, and the key stones
of the arches under the columns.”
The black Derbyshire marble chimneypiece and slab for the town hall cost £45
but for the town clerk’s office, only £5
was to be spent on the chimney-piece
of Portland stone, unlike Sir Richard
Worsley who spared no expense when
he finished his house that had been
started at Appuldurcombe in 1701.
Designed by John James with James
Wyatt providing its elegant Baroque style,

the 18th century mansion was intended
to house Sir Richard’s collection of Greek
Marbles, paintings and gems. When
Appuldurcombe House was completed
with its Tuscan columns, swags, roundels,
garlands and mouldings of Portland stone
carved by two stonemasons from London,
he could boast that it was the grandest and
most striking house on the Isle of Wight.
Talking of marble reminded Dave
Hailstone of his visit to a quarry in
the mountains near Pisa in Italy when
he saw the seam of marble that
Michelangelo, one of the most famous
stonemasons, used for his sculpture,
David. The craft of stonemasons has
existed for thousands of years and we
have them to thank for many of the
inspiring monuments that exist today like
the Easter Island statues, the Egyptian
Pyramids and the Greek Parthenon. I think
Dave Crouch put it in a nutshell when he
said, “It’s good seeing your work last,”

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