Heather Newton

The conversation starts with a discussion about the time change and how it affects their sleep patterns. They talk about their productivity levels in the morning and afternoon and how they structure their work accordingly. The conversation then transitions to an interview with Heather Newton, the Fabric Projects Manager at Canterbury Cathedral. Heather discusses her role and responsibilities in overseeing various projects related to the building's interior and exterior. She also shares her journey from art school to working with young people in Liverpool and eventually finding her passion in stone carving and conservation. Heather mentions her transition to Canterbury Cathedral and the challenges she faced balancing work and family life. So, welcome to the Stone Carving and Lettering Takeaway. We're back. How are you, Charlotte? I'm good. How are you, Nina? I'm all right. Thank you very much. The clocks have gone back. The nights are dark. The mornings are slightly brighter, actually. That's if you get up early enough to notice the difference. I felt like I've had jet lag this week. I'm just waking up ridiculously early. My clock hasn't changed. My internal clock. I'm not like that. Other than carving, sleeping is my special skill. I'm really jealous of that. That's fair. If I get up too early, I'm not productive. I'm hopeless. I need to just stay in bed. So, my body has naturally awoken and then I'm ready for carving. And do you know the weird thing? I'm so not a morning person when I'm carving lettering. I can never carve as many letters in the morning as I can after lunch. I will probably be one and a half times faster in the afternoon than I am in the morning. My body is physically incapable of gaining that same momentum as it does in the afternoon. So, I tend to do all my admin and focus on my desk-based stuff in the morning and then in the afternoon focus more on carving. That's how I try to do it. I'm definitely more productive after half past three. It's weird. Are you? From half past three, I could probably go through to about seven or eight. It's not very sociable. It's difficult, isn't it? If you live with somebody, you need to be conscious of social hours. So, we've got a great guest. We have a great guest today. Heather Newton, who is the Fabric Projects Manager at the Cathedral in Canterbury, Canterbury And Heather has had an extraordinary career through various types of stone-related careers from stone carving, masonry, through into conservation and now into the management role at Canterbury. And she's been so generous with her time. And I think regardless of your interest in carving and masonry, the interview is so inclusive, isn't it, of a person's journey through the craft industry. And so here is our interview with Heather and we hope you enjoy it. Listen and enjoy. And I've got the great pleasure this morning to be sitting, looking and talking to Heather Newton, who's, I've just been told, her new-ish title is the Fabric Projects Manager at Canterbury Cathedral. Heather, you've got an extraordinary history in the field of craft and continue to have an extraordinary career in the field of craft. So, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for inviting me. It's such a pleasure to see you and talk to you, as always. I just wanted to start, for those people who haven't heard of you or don't know what you do, just give me a little overview of what you're actually doing at the moment and what your role is at Canterbury. OK. It's a part-time role. So I'm in about three, two and a bit, three days a week. And I'm overseeing the fabric project. So, I mean, that fabric project at cathedrals really involves anything that is either attached or part of the building, inside or on the exterior. So the obvious thing is the stonework. I don't do glass because my wonderful colleague Leona Ziegler and her team, they do that. It could be textiles, it could be metal, it could be wood. And really, it's a sort of coordination role. So I'm no longer hands-on, as far as the cathedral's concerned. It's management, as the job title suggests. And it's bringing together the craftspeople, the tradespeople and the professional people to plan and then carry out a project, whatever that might be. We're doing a very large-scale project on the west front and the western towers. But we've also got smaller projects going around the precincts and on the cathedral itself. So it's very varied. That's amazing. And what an extraordinary place to work, everybody. Oh, it's fantastic. I know. You've had such a varied career and just a kind of a bit, I guess I see a little bit of myself in you, the kind of zigzagging from, you know, different possible career outlines to where you are now. So talk us through your journey from school through to where you are and all your experiences. Well, I'm very flattered by that comparison, thank you. I wouldn't be. Well, I think the first thing to say is that I didn't work at school. I left school with very, very few qualifications. I was lazy. I was a truant. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I ended up in art college because nobody really wanted me to go to art school. So I did that and didn't really... Which art school did you go to? Well, I did my foundation in Salisbury and then I went to what's now Leeds Metropolitan, but that was Leeds Poly and I did fine arts. It was quite a notorious course. Yeah, even I've heard of it. Mark Ullman comes to mind. And it was, you were there at a particularly pivotal moment of that art school, actually, weren't you? The revolutionary years. Yeah, it was. It was really interesting. I mean, they were the year ahead of me, but there was a lot going on. And certainly with music and with film, because it was very broad brush, there were no sort of schools of. It was just go in there. You had a huge modern studio, which was a bit like an aircraft hangar. And you could just, you had to find your own way through, which was fantastic for those people who were very focused and hardworking. Not so good for people like me. It's very easy to kind of meander through it all and not really do very much. So I emerged from the other end of that with a degree and still not really sure what I wanted to do. So I ended up working with young people and children in Liverpool. I moved from Leeds to Liverpool and I suddenly found that I was very engaged by that. Really interested. I learned so much from those people, from that situation. I did that for nearly three years. I'm sure that I was absolutely rubbish at it, but it was an incredible learning experience. I was in Toxteth and what was then Paddington Comprehensive School, which I think was at the time was declared to be the worst school in Britain. Oh my God. Really interesting things with children who were school refusers and who were getting into trouble with the police and they were kind of bringing them in, but into a special sort of unit and across gear groups. And it was very much child-centred learning. So it was taking a child where they were and then finding ways to encourage them, to interest them, to engage them somehow in education. And the same kids were going to a sort of youth club in Toxteth during these things. So I was working there. So quite long hours, but challenging circumstances at times. So I learned a lot about life. I learned a lot about myself and limits and my capacity for things, which was interesting. Also, it sounds like you learn how to pass on information to people in different ways. Yeah, yes. And an understanding of, you know, I, I, I've moved around quite a bit when I was a child, but I've been sort of a lot of my young years were spent in the middle of Wiltshire, so miles away from anywhere near Stonehenge. So I had a very sort of rural upbringing, quite solitary. And my brother and I were, we just had each other really. So it was interesting to go and to an inner city environment and to see how, what life was like for children growing up in those circumstances, with very difficult circumstances really, very removed from a natural setting in a, what was very, a proper concrete jungle in some instances. How did you find stuff? I mean, what happened then? What made you leave education and then move? I think you went to Weymouth after that, did you? I had a baby. You got pregnant, right. Okay. That can change things. The funding for the post that I was doing had stopped anyway. And also I knew that I would not be able to do that job and have a child at the same time. And, you know, it was before the days of really good nursery provision. There wouldn't have been, you know, I wouldn't have been earning enough and being very difficult. So we, we decided to leave Liverpool, which I was very sad about because I absolutely loved Liverpool. I mean, I really, really enjoyed living there. And I really enjoyed sort of talking to Liverpoolians and still do. You know, it's a fantastic city. And we moved to Weymouth in Dorset, which is kind of the other end of the country. That's sort of by way of Bristol and various other places. So Gary, my husband, did the masonry course at Weymouth College. And he said, I think you might enjoy this. And I did. And I did. I did enjoy it. I was rubbish, really. And I had to do it kind of part time because we were sharing childcare and so on. And I did another year. And it was the first year of the conservation course that they were running. I did that. And at that time, I think it probably still prevails today. Sadly, if you were a woman going into the industry, that was the way that you were funnelled. The softer side of the stone industry, they call it, don't they? Yeah, that's right. And I just needed to work. I needed a job. So I wasn't fighting that at the time. We needed income to sort of survive. So I did the conservation year and I had already contacted Canterbury Cathedral. And they sort of said, if you do this, when you come, you can come back and work as a member of the conservation team. And that's really kind of how it all happened. Did you both move to Canterbury then for that? No, we didn't. For that reason? Sadly, we sort of parted company at that point. I mean, we got back together later on. But Gary's work was really very much down in the West Country. So he was commuting very, very long distances and leading a very sort of stressed lifestyle, you know, just coming back to Canterbury at the weekend and off down to the West Country, working weeks, sort of living, sofa surfing, living in just, you know, it was quite difficult. It sounds horrific to both of you, exactly. And Becky, your daughter as well. Yeah. Very tricky time. She was very little and she was in nursery. I think it's a situation that many people are familiar with. I'm talking about the late 80s, early 90s. Yeah, very different times for a single mum. Yes, a completely different attitude, you know, to single parents. Can I ask you what the environment was for you at the cathedrals? If you look back on it then and now you're in a management position now, you know, what was the environment like for you as a young woman, young single mum working in conservation there? At times it was quite toxic, I have to be honest. And there were many occasions where I thought, I just can't do this. I'm going to leave. But I am a very, I am actually quite a stubborn person. And I just, it got to the point where I thought, you know, you can't let the bastards grind you down. I am forced out. I'm going to stay. But to learn, everything had to, I had to do all of that myself. I was taken on as a trainee, but the two people that I'd originally been put with, who were fantastic masons and carvers and lovely, really lovely people, very helpful, they, sadly, they left, sadly for me. They had a commercial firm and earned lots of money, you know, very soon after I arrived. So I sort of left a little bit in limbo and there wasn't any provision made for me. And what that did was instill in me a sense of the value of training, proper, proper training, organised training with very clearly, you know, set targets and assessment and encouragement and all of that, because I didn't have that. So I was very reliant on Gary. He was fantastic. But obviously, he was working away. So we weren't doing a lot. And he was, he was coming home and we were, I mean, we were carving headstones in our kitchen. That's amazing. I love that idea. The toddler walking about while you and Gary are like chipping away into the Tundi roast. I love that image. Full take from visitors, you know, people who didn't know us that well, if they came in and they see you, you've got a great big... You've got a massive... Boxes at the end of your kitchen. Just a grit at work and at home. It was a fight. It sounds like you had to, it was a big struggle fight. I don't think we're at all unusual. I think most people who go into crafts and do what we all do, you know, whatever manner, they have similar problems. I think it's quite tough. And I think we've all worked on the kitchen table or in the bedroom, carving, making a mess. Any space we can utilise has been utilised. However you can do it, you do it, don't you? Yeah, I always think I've got a stone in the garden to my mum and I made it on a kitchen worktop and the 11th floor of a tower block in Stockwell. So yeah, I've been there. Not with a toddler, thank God. So that leads us quite nicely into, so you went from conservation and banker masonry because you were trained as a banker mason, weren't you? I know you skipped over that bit, but you were trained as a banker mason. And then what happened? Can I ask a question here, Nina? Sorry, because I don't have a masonry background. So what would you say for people like me is the difference between a banker mason and, you know, what specifically would that mean? Banker masons work stone to templates and it has to fit. All those shapes that are taken out and then we've reproduced and slotted in that form the architectural part of the structure. That's right. So you work it to moulds to templates as accurately and as quickly as possible. That's very precise. Very precise. Yeah. Well, hopefully, eventually. It's a very skilled job, really skilled job. I think most people who do it and who are good at it, they enjoy challenging themselves. So they'll work a job and then if they have to do the same thing again, they'll do it, but they'll want to do it faster and slightly better than they did the previous time. So you do have to sort of draw on your own resources a bit. It's interesting that if you read anything about the history of craft training and the people who do it, there is a theory that boredom and overcoming boredom of repetitive actions is actually a really integral part of craft training. But you can never tell a young person that because they just walk away. You have to kind of introduce that gently, don't you, when they come across it head to head? Yeah. And then you have to ask them, you know, what do you do in your internal thoughts and your, you know, Charlotte and I have talked about the inner stillness that you have to develop if you're not to fight the instinct to just walk away from something because it's so boring in a way. You have to give yourself goals, don't you? Like you say, faster, better, more efficient, cleaner, sharper tools, all of that stuff. It's really interesting that we all seem to universally come across that in any craft discipline. Absolutely. Yeah. It is a battle with yourself a lot of the time. Exactly. You have to learn to develop your focus as well, don't you? So that when you're, the point of your focus is at the end of your tools and your body is moving in response to what you're doing. But after a while, when you're confident, I always think your mind is detached. Your thinking brain is quite often detached from that visual part of making. I always think there's two sides to my head when I'm carving. I can daydream or think a problem, but it's completely unrelated to the lettering that I'm carving in front of me. Yeah. The distance between your head and the end of the tools that you're using kind of gets shorter. You're no longer really conscious. It's just happening. You know, I've got this in my hand and I'm, you know, I'm just hitting it with a hammer. It's just happening. And you're focused on the actual work itself. But yeah, your brain can kind of meander off a little bit. I'm not sure I've ever quite reached that point, Charlotte, though. I think I'm not sure that I am competent at my craft that I've been able to achieve. I don't. I think lettering is maybe a bit different. I would have to disagree with that. I think I've seen a lot of beautiful work coming out of the Newton kitchen and of the banker at Canterbury. So just going back to that question then, you were in the banker shop, which is really fascinating what that is. The workshop that the masons work in and bankers, for anybody who don't know, is a bench, French for bench. You were there, you were working with the masons. And then how did you morph or join, organically join the conservation team? Just how? How did it happen? They decided to establish a conservation team. They didn't have one at that time, there wasn't one. They did. But then when Steve and Bob left, it was just me. So I kind of fell back in with the masons for a while. And I think because I wouldn't go. I just thought, oh, well, we've got to do something with it. And I've been, I was sent off to work at Rochester Cathedral with Nick Vernon, who was fantastic. And the people who were working with him because they were doing the conserving the West Front at Rochester. So there was a lot of cleaning and plastic repairs and all that kind of thing. And I had previously sort of met Nick when he'd been working at Canterbury. And he was really encouraging. I mean, he's an apprentice chain mason. He was apprenticed at Canterbury and then went off and did conservation. And well-known, well-established and respected consultant conservator. But this is sort of going back again to the early 90s, late 80s. And I really enjoyed working at Rochester and I enjoyed the thought processes that are involved in conservation and the consideration. It isn't just cleaning. It isn't just stone scrubbing. If that's what you're doing, you're not really a conservator. You're not thinking about what you're doing at all. I was very engaged by that whole thing and looking at parts of the building in very minute detail and then being able to step back and look at the whole thing and understand the impact of that work. I mean, cleaning a building is probably, ultimately has more impact on its appearance than putting new masonry in. And it can be risk or it can help to bring everything together so that the new build isn't shouting, the old build is respected and some of the beauty of that is revealed. Perhaps it's been obscured with a dirt layer or whatever. So I got really engaged by that and found it very interesting. And when I returned to Canterbury, I was sort of working over a summer. They had decided to sort of resurrect the conservation team. And I had a series of people who kind of came through working with me. And we also had other consultant conservators coming in on various projects and I was able to work with them. So I was very keen to be outward facing. One of the problems with cathedral works departments is people tend to stay for a long time. I'm a prime example of that. And it can become very flicky, very inward looking and, you know, that's not good. And I could see what that had done. You know, the results of that were very evident when I looked around. So I was really keen to sort of look outwards and gain knowledge and further training for the skills from people beyond the cathedral precincts. That long term thing must have advantages as well, though, in terms of developing an intimate knowledge of the building and understanding how decisions have been made over the long period. Does that make a big difference, do you think, in a role like that? I think it does. You do have that long view. And I think as long as you can balance that with an understanding that things changed and doing 10, 20 years ago may not now be considered appropriate and that you're willing to be very critical of what's happened and change and absorb new ideas and new ways of doing things. I think, yes, I think having that long view and having that very, very detailed understanding of the building and of the materials and the way that they've responded to weathering and so on is an advantage. You get to know the sort of inner workings of it. Do you think they're all very different in that respect, cathedrals? Do they all have a unique set of problems? Yeah, I think there are commonalities, you know. But yes, each one is its own entity and there are different challenges. And one of the joys of being involved in the Cathedrals Workshop Fellowship, which is a craft training programme that we'll probably talk about in a little while, is the fact that I've been able to go to other cathedrals. And the whole idea of establishing that was this cross fertilisation. You know, you can learn from what they're doing at another cathedral. And again, it's about being open to learning, open to new ideas. When you say it like that, it sounds completely best way. Why wouldn't you do that? But there's obviously been a lot of resistance listening to you from different places to adopt best practice and see what's happening elsewhere. It sort of seems surprising in a way when you say it like that. A lot of it boils down to individuals and how they view their job. Some people, it is just a job. They've got other concerns. Their life is really outside. They're doing very busy doing other things and they just turn up to work and they're there. They have a presence, but it doesn't interest them in the same way. And you can't, you know, everybody is different, aren't they? But I think one of the problems with that is that you can just come in and do the same thing day after day and not ever wonder or think why you're doing it. And is there a better way? I think there is some of that. Cathedrals are, all of them, the sort of governance of cathedrals is very, very much about that particular cathedral. And I think that they are being encouraged generally as a sort of management level to be much more outward looking now. But certainly back in the late 80s, it was quite, not a closed shop, but it was reluctant to accept criticism, definitely. And I think at this point we need to say that not every cathedral has an in-house team of people, does it? There are some cathedrals with less income and less investment that have to go to commercial firms to do the building works for them or the maintenance for them. And I know that you're involved. We will, we'll get to the cathedral training project. But it's quite interesting because when I left college, I went to a cathedral that was managed by a commercial firm. And my experience was very different. The commercial firm were on the ground and on the fabric every day. But their focus, if you like, was a commercial one and not necessarily a holistic historical and national importance goal. That learning wasn't encouraged in a sense. They were there to do a job and you were dispensable. There was no kind of encouragement to stay for any period of time. You knew you were there for a small, short time. Get done what you could and walk away without any attachment in that sense. It feels like, it does feel like it's changed a bit. If we come on to the cathedral training, I get it. I always say it wrong. It's Cathedral Workshops Fellowship, isn't it? Yes. Is that right? Worthy sounding, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, that's nice. So I'm not going to underplay what you did. You basically wrote, you and I met a chap called Bill, I think, or Bill at Gloucester University. And I think you wrote the schemes of work, the programme there. You developed it, didn't you? No, I'll have to backtrack a bit. You're squirming. You're squirming, aren't you? You don't want to take any credit for this. Go on, deflect. Deflect it, Heather. No, I have to explain. There was a meeting at Gloucester during Gloucester Carving Festival in 1999. And Pascal Micheleton, who's the head mason there, and John David and I were sat in Pascal's kitchen. And I was grizzling, really, about the fact that I felt that I hadn't been trained properly. And I was sort of like a half-finished article. And they were grizzling about the new NVQ. And they weren't very happy about it. And we all agreed that masons and other craftspeople, but we were focused at that point on masonry, working in historic buildings, environments, need a really broad and deep training. They need a really good understanding of architectural history. They need a really good understanding of the significance of the place from a sort of historical slash religious slash place of interest point of view. They need to understand how cathedrals in particular are governed because it's quite complex. And the laws that pertain to any work that is done in that environment, as well as a really high level of skill and understanding. And that would include conservation. But it is everything. And that masons working in that environment should be mason conservators. John went back off to York. And a wonderful man called Peter Liddon, who is ex-chapter clerk from York, sort of took up the banner on our behalf. Because he had power and influence and he knew lots of people and was an extraordinarily energetic person. He organized a meeting and got deans involved and sort of generated interest in having some kind of collaborative training thing whereby we could swap apprentices. They go off and work in another workshop for a while. And he got them interested in the idea of an enhanced level of training. We've been quite by chance, I think, an amazing woman called Frances Canbrook, who... Very dynamic woman. Lots of power. Superpowers. She's absolutely amazing. And the two of those together were really the engine that drove this. Frances has, she's worked in higher education. At that point she was working, there was a government scheme that was encouraging work-based learning, but linked to places of higher education. And that seemed to fit really well with what we were trying to do. We weren't really wanting to pack our students off or our apprentices off to college for a long time. We needed them in the workplace. And we could see that what they were doing in the workplace could contribute towards their learning, their learning on the job. How would you recognise that in a formal way? And in the end, the University of Gloucester, she seemed to be the most appropriate organisation to partner with. They have been incredible. They've been so supportive of what we've been doing. And really that's how the Cathedral's Workshop Fellowship was, you know, came about. Pascal led the architectural and archaeology course, and he wrote the course for that. John wrote the sort of setting out a work-based project course. And there are various other individuals contributed as well. I wrote the conservation module. And we were, at that point, we were module leaders. So we were kind of doing, delivering the teaching. We had study blocks in various cathedrals that would focus on one particular aspect of the course. And our students were enrolled by the university on a foundation degree, so up to level five. And really that's, and it's still going on today. And I think I was, I had the pleasure of being involved in the panel that agreed the new NVQ3 in stonemasonry, which the government decided no longer needed to, well, it wasn't the government, but they put restrictions on certain NVQs and the NVQ3 stonemasonry basically disappeared overnight, didn't it? Yeah. Which unfortunately means if you're a young, or if you're an apprentice and you want to get onto a higher education course, like a foundation course, you need NVQ level three in your craft, don't you? And without that, you cannot move upwards, which sounds like a brick wall for anybody who wants to, in craft training, that wants to go beyond. So if people are interested in learning about this, where do they go to find out about it? Well, you have to be an apprentice at a cathedral to do this programme. You can't do this unless you're, I think the thing, can we just talk about if you were a, you're out there and you would like to become an apprentice, or you think you would like to learn in the environment of a cathedral, and apprenticeships do come up, don't they, Heather? Just talk about them a little bit. Yeah, apprenticeships do come up. They're usually advertised in local media. So they might be on, they'll be on a cathedral website. So if you are interested in doing that, check the website for your local cathedral or a cathedral that you might be interested in working at. Sometimes local schools are told, you know, the careers teachers will be told so that we can get people from the local area to apply. It's often worth just writing to whoever it is who's sort of running the department that looks after the building. So it might be a director of works or a superintendent of works or a clerk of works. Just write to them, say that you're interested. Is there an opportunity to train? Is anything coming up? Can they suggest where you might go? Go in and visit. Ask if you can go and visit. If they have an in-house team, it's always worth going in. Most people would offer a day or a couple of days in the workshop just to give you a little trial. And I would definitely recommend that because it is often not what people think it is. You're not going to be carving angels all day, unlike Nina. That seems to be it. You're not going to be carving equestrian statues. And gargoyles. It's the thing, isn't it? Well, I've been making gargoyles all day. Well, I think only like 5% of cathedrals have gargoyles. So no, that's not happening, is it? It's hard work. You have to be prepared to work outside in the cold. You have to work at height. You need to be very honest with yourself, whether you're physically capable of doing that. You spend a lot of the day standing. You don't sit down to carve. You stand up. Stand up to fix stones. You stand up to work them at your bank or your bench. So it is quite hard physical work. And you have to enjoy being outdoors. So it's very worthwhile asking to go in and have a little bit of work experience and try and get some in the workshop and some out on site so that you know how you can cope with being out. And I was really encouraged. I was asked recently how the cathedral workshops that everybody's push at the moment is widening participation, of course, because as a country with hundreds and hundreds of different types of people and you want your workshop to reflect your local community. And you would imagine the cathedral bubble would be very monocultural. But actually, what I've experienced, if I talk about the gender division, they are actually a very equal employer. You know, I've seen more women in the banker shop in cathedrals than I ever, ever have on site across the country. So you're a leader, I think. The cathedrals are a leader in training anybody and everybody. And I'd also say that age, because, you know, you might think you'd have to be 18 or 19 to be an apprentice. But actually, having met some of the new cathedral workshop fellows, I was quite surprised at the age range, actually. Yeah, really good spread of ages. I think a lot of people, they may have had a career doing something else and then they have a sort of midlife career change. And it actually works very well for them. We have people who have been in the armed services and then, you know, they come out at the end of their 22 years or whatever and they want, they need to work. And it often suits them, you know, to do something like masonry or carpentry. So it's, you know, I would just say we are very focused on masonry because we all work stone. But cathedrals with works departments also employ carpenters and plumbers and electricians. So if you're watching this or listening to this and that's your trade or your craft, your discipline, try because it is a wonderful environment in which to work. It's very different. And the cathedrals workshop fellowship has pathways for those other crafts and trades. So we've had carpenters, we've had plumbers and we've had electricians who are doing the course. And it isn't just for cathedral employees. We've had people from commercial firms who've come on. So again, you know, if you're in the commercial sector, there is a possibility that you can you can enrol and do the course. You have to have continuity of work. You have to sort of, I think it will be quite difficult for a self-employed person to do it, although it's not impossible. As long as you can demonstrate in your, in the work that you're doing, you can satisfy the sort of learning outcomes for the different modules. And it might be more difficult for some self-employed people to be able to do that. But if you're working for a commercial outfit, we've had people and their employers have been very happy to have them come on the course. And it's great because you have a different mindset, a different, it's really good for all of the students and for the tutors to have that. So let's just talk briefly about lettering. You and Gary, the powerhouse that is the Newton household. You're both letter cutters, aren't you? And you both run a small, your own business doing memorials. I know because you're so busy, Gary leads on that some of the time. And so did you, were you formally trained lettering? Is it something that you picked up through necessity? No, at Weymouth College, they had a really good lettering tutor called Andy Whittle. I was wondering if you were taught by Andy. Yeah, I was going to ask that. He, you know, it was great. We were so lucky that we did the course when we did because I think it changed not long after. And, you know, that's no criticism of other tutors. I'm sure they're very good. But I think it was a sort of golden period for the training and the lettering was taken very seriously. And, you know, Andy was a good teacher. Gary is a natural. I find it really hard. I found it really hard. He took to it really quickly. And he ended up working with Andy sort of at weekends and things, you know, while he was still a student. And he's loved it ever since, you know, really, really enjoys it. So we've got a lot to thank Andy for. You hear so many people who were trained by Andy with lettering coming through from Weymouth and just got such a good reputation. And his work still is just outstanding. I think generally at that point, the training at Weymouth was really good across the board. It was a good time. We were really lucky. So that's quite a lot to run the works, you know, all the works at the Cathedral. And it's lots of different projects that you have to keep on top of. And when you run a workshop, especially things like lettering, you tend to have lots of different projects on the go at the same time. That's a lot to keep on top of, isn't it? Yes, it is. I think at the Cathedral, because there are so many tiers of management, you're never really just out there on your own in the same way that you are with your flying solo, with your businesses. It's all on you. It's all on you. So I don't, I've not experienced that to the same extent. I see it with Gary. And it is hard being a self-employed person, a self-employed craftsperson, because you are having to keep all of those plates spinning doing one project, but your mind is sort of thinking about the next one and that one that somebody's been clamouring to have finished. And it's, I think it's hard. And I think I'm fortunate in that I'm part of a team. I don't have that same amount of pressure. So do you do much carving when you're not at the Cathedral, then, in the workshop? Do you still...? No, sadly, I don't. For a while, I was sort of a head mason and I had this really strange, naive idea that I would be able to be in the workshop sort of for four days a week. And then on Fridays, I'd have to do a little bit of admin. It was a very rude awakening when I realised that it's actually, it's all admin. And once you kind of make that jump from one, from the workshop to the sort of little management office, it's, it becomes more difficult to go back, to go back unless you can maintain that practice in some other sphere. We were laughing the other day, me and Nina, about a project that Nina's working on. You know, the amount of admin around it, the carving seems like the easy bit at the end. You know, when most people think the project's about carving, you know, when you actually get to carve what you're making, it's the nice, easy bit, isn't it, for us? It's the bit that gets at the end, you're like, oh, yeah, and I should just make it now. Hang on, I'll just shut the computer and I'll just, I'll go and get dirty. That'll be quite nice, actually. Oh, yeah, on Thursday morning at 10, I get to go and do some carving. Oh, yeah, that's nice. The admin's all up here as well, isn't it? The pressure on you. There's no, there's no job. What's that word? You know, like job completion. You don't ever get that high of having something leave the workshop with an email view. I guess when we're talking about email, we should, sorry, admin, we should just briefly talk about you left the Cathedral for a couple of years post-Covid, didn't you? Or during Covid, actually. During Covid, after Covid. You came, at the start of Covid, you came and steered the oil tanker that is City and Guild's carving, historic carving course for a couple of years. And yeah, how different was that? It was, it was amazing. It was very different. It was really tough, really, really tough. You know that the college was shut at the time and we had students working remotely in their bedsits. And it's really thanks to the extraordinary staff at City and Guild and they really are extraordinary. And including you, you all sort of just, just managed to steer it all through and to maintain contact with those poor people. God, I can't think of a course that is less suited to working at... Online teaching. Oh, there's just an online teaching. But you did, you did it. And the students, they blessed them, they carried on, they soldiered on all the way through. It was a really, really difficult, but very, very rewarding thing to have done. I wouldn't have missed it at all. I learned so much, learned so much from the staff, from all of you and also from the students, you know, I mean, they are incredible. So what an extraordinary thing to have been involved in during that time. It's like a dream now. And I love looking back, trying to keep it all together somehow, keep it on track. But it was thanks to... You did, you did it. And the resilience of the students, you know, just collectively, damn it, we're going to carry on and do this from hell to high water. And those final shows, amazing. Extraordinary work. So you were at Fiffingills and then you were enticed back with a project that you'd been on for quite some time. I'm thinking specifically about the gate project that you've managed. And it is, if anybody goes to Canterbury, just go and look at the, I mean, it's the gate you walk under when you go into the precinct. What's its official title? It's Christchurch Gate. Christchurch, yeah. It's just stunning. It's Christchurch Gate and it's the main entrance into the cathedral precinct. You really get a feel at Canterbury for the precinct as well because you walk, it feels like an enclosure. You don't always get when you go to some cathedrals, it feels like when you walk in, it is that precinct and it's an enclosed space. And the gate really helps to define that when you walk through it, doesn't it? It does. I mean, even with the Canterbury Journey project, they created a visitor centre, a new visitor centre, but it was decided very early on by people far higher up there, you know, the evolutionary scales and they wanted to keep that as the main entrance into the precincts because you get that wow factor. You can't see the cathedral in its entirety from anywhere in the city unless you're up on one of the hills around the outside of it. So when you're in the city centre, you just get little glimpses of it like that. So you have to go through that gate and you can't even see it from just standing on the outside of the gate because it's slightly skewed. So you have to go through the gate and then look up and wow, there's this huge building. So I really love the gate. It's amazing. Obviously, I'm doing a project at Canterbury at the minute and I went for one of the many meetings that you are required to go to and I walked through for the first time after the scaffolding and the hoarding had been taken down. And some people would say brave decision to reintroduce the polychroming at its fullest glory. I mean, it literally looks like you've thrown a palette, a bright palette on the front and it just opens your eyes. I know some French cathedrals and a couple of German cathedrals have gone down the route of full polychroming and not making it a kind of pastiche distressed version of what it might have been a hundred years ago, but actually as it was when it was built and I absolutely loved it. And it makes people stop in their tracks when they come around the corner, doesn't it? And I remember my partner saying, wow, what made them do that? And I'm like, I don't know, but what a great decision. What a great decision. Well, it was a very, very, that decision was made over a very long period of time and by lots of people, lots of individuals and agencies. I think it's worth saying that the front of the cathedral gate is largely 1930s, early 1940s reproduction in sand cement, cast sand cement repair. And that the paint that was on there, because we did extensive tests and took samples from all over the gate to see if there was any medieval paint surviving, all of the paint that was on there was from the 20th century. Amazing. Really good records in the cathedral archives of what the colours were. The heraldry was sort of a redesigned version of the medieval by the then architect W.D. Carrow, who also had very good records. So we had a lot of information and it's not a restoration of a medieval scheme, it's actually a restoration of a 20th century interpretation. Fascinating. But it fits so perfectly, doesn't it? And that shows my ignorance because I looked at it and I thought, oh, that's just fab. Yeah, well, I mean, all of the medieval buildings were painted those colours and so the gate would have been, the gate itself is a big trumpet blast of, you know, it was the latest style. It was the last major building before Henry VIII kind of, you know, decided to move in. And it's all about power and wealth and it would have been really, really blingy. So it's... In an age without electrical lighting with just, you know, candlelight evenings and probably not as much colour in the day-to-day life that we're familiar with now. No, I think we take it for granted, don't we? You know, we are literally saturated with colour all the time and we don't really think about it. I suppose a lot of medieval clothing would have been quite just soft, dirty colours. It was only the wealthy who could afford the clothes or fabric that was dyed brilliant colours. It was expensive, so... Wouldn't have had as many clothes to wear as we do now. No, no, no clothes, Mandy. It would have been... I mean, I love colour and I love colour on stone. It's interesting how it comes in and out of fashion over periods of time and, you know, what our perception of how we should use colour. You know, we're all very used to that faded, muted look that centuries have given colour, but we rarely get to see what it would have looked like. I think it divides people, doesn't it? Paintings don't. I love it. It absolutely divides people down the middle. It's a Marmite conversation if you tell a student or you say to somebody, I love this, but I'm going to, you know, this is just the surface, I'm going to paint it. Some people just, why would you do that? That whole kind of religious, the cult of the truth of the material, the surface material is so evocative to some people, whereas I love it. It's interesting with headstones because you're often, when you put, and you'll know this as well, Heather, when you put a stone into a churchyard and you have to get the diocesan approval and there's often quite strict rules and regulations about the use of colour. But it's interesting to think that that guidance is there from the church as well still. Yeah. But again, it's a very modern approach, isn't it? It is. Yeah. I mean, I suppose I can sit from both sides, you know, because we are so used to seeing the skeleton of the building, aren't we, without its complement. And we love the contrast between the colour provided by stained glass and the plainness of the stone surfaces. But they would all have been painted and they were all telling the narrative. So they would have read the paintings between the windows in the same way that they read the stories in the windows themselves. And we've kind of got so far away from that now. It really does ruffle people's feathers when you, when you try and reintroduce it. But heck, why, you know, I'm happy to have a go. I think I really do think it works on the website. And I'm very happy with what's being done there. We will be criticised and have been. And people are in sight with their opinions. And it's, you know, that's how it is. I mean, it's not finished yet either. So there's more to come. Brilliant. Well, they're wrong, aren't they? Those people who don't like it are wrong. We're coming towards the end. But I just want to say you, I always think of you guys as the Newtons. You're like the Medici's, aren't you? Because you've got the stone mason oligarch Gary Newton. You've got you, the head of the world's conservation team. And you only let your daughter, you sold your daughter off to Westminster Abbey's head mason. And now you only produce boy child. Seriously. Becky was the only one. So, you know, you produced another son who's been sent off into the craft industry, Ollie. And then you produce two grandsons who don't stand a chance in hell. And they'll all be indoctrinated into carving in the kitchen. You really are the Medici's. You're taking over the South Coast. So what's it like being in this extraordinary guild of Newton's craft people? It's hard, isn't it? Because you also live in a commune. So you're all having to... We do. You're like, you are the Medieval model. I find it probably incredibly boring. Talking about 9H pencils. You know, you've painted them. 9H pencils and the art of line. Yeah, the kids don't get crayons. They just get 9H pencils. I mean, what's it like? It must be really nice, actually, to be able to bring your troubles home and people know what you're going on about. Yeah, I think it's just like, for God's sake, stop banging on about that. Yeah, I think it's just like any other family. We just grizzle and grump and ignore each other, really. What's for dinner? What's for dinner? Open the wine, for God's sake. Is it wine time? When I talk to the students, they're like, oh, yeah, we want to go to Westminster Abbey. I was like, well, if you talk to Heather, why? Her son-in-law is the head mason there. Right, so you're just a normal family. I might call the podcast the Dynasty of Heaven. The Dynasty of Discontent. So when we come to the end, I want to ask you, I know it's been a long time since you've had to do bank masonry and everything, but is there, it's not like a Benny Hill moment, but is there a tool in your box, Heather, that you wouldn't leave home without or something? Have you got a favourite? Yeah, tape measure. I always have to measure three times, cut once, tape measure. Do you have a favourite type of tape measure? I have quite a little one that I quite like that's good for some things because it doesn't weigh too much in my bag. A sort of medium-sized one. Yeah, not one of the really big things. Yeah, medium-sized, easy, in your hand pocket kind of tape measure. Yeah, definitely. You don't use any of those digital tape measures now. How do you feel about those? Well, they're a good idea, but I wouldn't know how to do it, to be honest with you. Yeah, me too, I just was wondering. I don't trust them. I don't know. I'm just a bit old-fashioned. I just don't trust them. They are. They're a great idea, aren't they? Really clever. You can measure up to, somebody came in and they measured the height of the bolt in the nail. It's just like, wow, that's accurate, isn't it? This was just a tape measure. I love it. I don't know about you, and you kind of wind it out and it needs to go up a wall and it folds in on itself and then you try and, it's just kind of like the art of putting the tape measure straight up in the air without holding it. They really got up it. Darren, Darren Nicolette Smith, who's an amazing setter out mason, he had that knack. His tape measure never bent in the middle, ever. It was always, and he was really nifty with it. Such a skill, it's unbelievable. Real skill, tape measure skill. And if you had to give a piece of advice to anybody thinking of coming into stone masonry and carving, etc., because you've taught everybody and anybody who's in that realm, conservation, carving, masonry, what is, what kind of advice would you give to somebody thinking they might want to go into this? I know it's really like a massive question, but is there anything, if someone came to you and said, look, well they have, they do come to you, what do you say to them? One of the first things I say is you mustn't mind getting messy. You know, it's a very obvious thing, but actually I've had people walk out at the end of the day's work experience going, oh, I didn't know I'd get dusty. I didn't know I'd get messy. And they're kind of like looking at their hands and, you know, that's it. Bye bye. It's a useful, useful experience for them to have that. So you're never going to get ripped unless you're very lucky and you own a masonry firm. It's hard work, but it's incredibly rewarding. I think it's just be quite dogged in your pursuit of training and go and talk to a lot of people. Not everybody goes the same route, but that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. And not everybody learns at the same speed or in the same way. So try not to compare yourself too much to other people. Just concentrate on your strengths and stick with it. Just practice. You won't get better unless you practice. It's not easy. It isn't easy. Getting a skill, a craft skill, is not the same as reading a book and remembering what was in it and then being able to reproduce that for an exam. It's a different kind of learning. So allow yourself time to learn and to get better. That's it really. Perfect advice. Brilliant advice. I'm going to end with my domination of the interview actually. I'm going to say when I went into masonry, well I was in carving, but I had to get a masonry qualification to be able to work in the UK. I had to get some formal recognition of cutting stone. And I ended up at the Building Crafts College's workshop at Warren Street at the time before they moved to Stratford. And you came round with some of the cathedral people. You came and did a visit because I think you had apprentices training with me. You had Neil, Neil's training. It was so heartening for me. The only women I knew doing masonry at that time were the people that I was around in the workshop. I think there were three women out of 12 or 15 people. And I just wanted to say how important it was to see you. And you were extraordinarily generous with your time and advice. And I felt like, I feel when I look back, that was a pivotal moment in my decision to pursue and be dogged training afterwards. So I think if I hadn't met you, I wouldn't have gone to work for Cathedral End. I wouldn't be sitting here today. I don't think I would have. I know you're responsible for all of the mistakes I've made in the last 30 years. Single-handedly responsible. So I wanted to thank you personally, actually, for being that. You're an incredibly, and anybody who's been taught by you or worked with you would agree, that your generosity around giving the information and giving advice and good advice. And it's just never to be underestimated, actually, the impact that you've made on a lot of people's lives. So personally, I can talk about that. And you and Gary, actually, have been instrumental in my successes and failures, quite frankly. So thank you for that. And I know there are a lot of people that will be listening to that, that would second. Oh, bless you, Nina. It's so nice to hear, Nina. Well, I think that's the nicest thing I've ever heard. Thank you. I'm actually going to finish with a top tip. And I'd love to get Heather's view on my top tip. So as a letter carver, quite often when we paint lettering on stone, when we paint on a soft limestone, it's very time consuming to paint the letters by hand afterwards because you can't easily flood them because the stone stains. I know some masons use clay, but I've never got on with that. And I've been messing about in my workshop. And what I did was I made a mixture of corn flour and water and heated it up on my stove in a pan like custard. Custard. And then I painted it on top of a piece of Portland stone and carved through it. Then I flood painted my letter with oil paint. And then when it was completely dry, I scrubbed everything off with a scrubbing brush and some soap, but very gently and got the most beautiful edge on the painted stone. And I just think that could be a game changer for us in terms of flood painting on Portland or soft limestone. So that's my top tip is try it. Don't do it on a piece of work and then say, Charlotte, it didn't work. Make sure it works for you and that you're comfortable. But have you ever come across anything like that other than the clay? No, no clay. That is amazing. That is the best top tip ever. I can't count that one. That's fantastic. You learn something every day. Well, I would encourage people to give it a go. It was quite a thick paste that I painted on so you could see it on the surface of the stone. And then I drew on top of it, cut through it, and it seemed to work really well. So I'd love people to try it. I'd love to get feedback on whether it works or not for them on different stones because it could save us hours on a big job. I love the fact, Charlotte's main drive in life, apart from cutting stone, is food. Cooking. I love the fact that she's combined cooking with carving. Food technology. Food technology and carving. I've got an O level in food and nutrition. That's amazing. Thank you so much. I think we'll end on that then. Thank you so much, Heather. Yeah, thank you. A joy to talk to you. Yes, such a lovely time. Thank you so much. It's been an absolute joy talking to you too. Oh, dear. Thank you. That set me up. I always find it so fascinating listening to different experiences from people within the stone and lettering industry because if you didn't really know much about stone, you might think they're all the same. But in fact, everybody has got such a different way into stone, different ways of working and different working experiences. That's why I find it so fascinating listening to people and talking with people like Heather. I mean, such an amazing range of skills and competency built up over many years. It's incredible. She has such a humility to her. She doesn't sort of ever take credit for roles and the effect that she's had on people, actually, and the work that she's done. She's very much a team player. And, you know, I've noticed working with her that she's an enabler. You know, she's really good at bringing people together to do extraordinary projects. And so wonderful to talk to a woman, you know, who made such an impact into the masonry and industry. And, you know, Heather's somebody that you might not necessarily come in contact with or be able to find her on a Google search. But her reach and her story is so important, I think, for anybody thinking of coming into the industry. So nice to allow us to grill her online. So I think that's enough from us this month. I think that's it. But we've got an extraordinary, we've got some amazing people lined up, haven't we? Yeah, some really good. Unbelievable. Hang on, hang on the notices that we send out because you're going to be, your socks are going to be blown clean off. So this is us, Charlotte and Nina, from the Stone Carving and Lettering Takeaway. And happy chipping. Happy chipping, everybody.