For the past thirty years Andrew Ziminski has travelled as a journeyman stonemason throughout ancient Wessex in a way that would be understood by his medieval predecessors.

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In exploring its by-ways, rivers and sea-roads, Andrew explains how they became the arterial routes along which the ideas, migrants and materials flowed that were to build Britain.

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While working to conserve some of the first monuments to be built by the pioneer Neolithic farmers, he acquires a unique understanding of the techniques that were in turn used to put up the later early Bronze-age megalithic monuments such as Stonehenge.

 

After the reconstruction of a Romano-British temple we learn how modern masons and their Roman predecessors used many of the same tools and tricks that were used to build the great medieval cathedrals.

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Later, time is spent in the carving workshop of St Pauls Cathedral and on Portland in Dorset, Thomas Hardy’s 'Isle of Slingers,' from where the raw materials were supplied to construct what has become the nation's church.

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A canoe trip from London along the River Thames takes in Hampton Court Palace and then on to the the engine houses, mills and aqueducts of the Industrial revolution and its influence on the work of William Morris that was in turn to impact on the 'movements' of the 'Arts and Crafts' and The Bauhaus.

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THE STONEMASON is both a celebration of man's close relationship with its greatest of natural materials, and a reminder of the value of 'made by hand' that offers a unique account of the life as a craftsman.