The symbolic power of stone

St Paul’s Cathedral is one of many of London’s buildings that are clad in Portland Stone

On taking a trip to London, your eye will likely have been drawn to the white fossiliferous limestone used to clad many of the capital’s buildings. Portland Stone, a Jurassic limestone historically (and still) quarried from the Isle of Portland in Dorset, UK, faces St Paul’s Cathedral, the British Museum, Buckingham Palace, much of Trafalgar Square, Oxford Street, Regent Street, Government offices and memorials along Whitehall, as well as Burlington House (amongst others, see Hackman, 2014). It has become a famous building stone used across Britain and around the world.

In 2013, Portland Stone was selected by a subgroup of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) as the first ‘Global Heritage Stone Resource’ (GHSR) – a stone linked to cultural heritage and societal relevance. There are now many GHSRs that tie strongly to specific areas, communities, buildings or applications.

The status of Portland Stone as a GHSR is supported by its use by architect Sir Christopher Wren [1632 – 1723], as well as in projects such as the Commonwealth War Graves, which, it is argued, link the stone – albeit in an undefined way – with British national identity. Its selection makes sense in many ways: it is a beautiful, ornamental stone used to create some of Britain’s most stunning architecture, and unarguably has tremendous significance in the country’s built and natural heritage.

However, that heritage is a selective one. We used analyses of Hansard – transcripts of Parliamentary debates held in Britain and many Commonwealth countries that date back over 200 years – to explore the history and politics of Portland Stone (Butler-Warke, A. & Warke, M., 2021). We found that for some, the sense of Britishness that the stone was originally meant to symbolise is intertwined with exclusionary notions of class and empire, and a selective vision of the past. Portland Stone does not represent the lives, experiences, or histories of many who have lived alongside it.

Symbolising Britain
King James VI of Scotland ascended the throne of England as James I in 1603.With the objective of uniting a new rapidly expanding Protestant empire, James sought to establish a new sense of ‘British’ identity. The task of fulfilling this vision fell in large part to architects, and particularly to James’ surveyor Inigo Jones [1573 – 1652] and his successor, Wren. They aimed to create in London a ‘glorious Temple’ to rival that of Rome albeit a vision whose progress was interrupted by the Civil War. Pamphlets and artworks of the time suggest that this new Protestant temple should be built from a domestic (and therefore ‘Protestant’) stone sourced from Britain, as opposed to material sourced from predominantly Catholic continental Europe. The temple in question was St Paul’s Cathedral and Portland Stone was the ideal material – it was sourced from southern England, could be obtained from common and Crown lands, and could be transported by sea, directly from the quarries to London.

London was not the only Imperial city in what was then the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland whose centre was increasingly clad in Portland Stone – others included Manchester, Liverpool, and Belfast. In Dublin, however, the use of Portland Stone became a matter of contention.

Irish nationalist MPs in Westminster vehemently opposed the use of Portland Stone in Dublin at the expense of a native Irish equivalent, such as the Stradbally Limestone. However, as a 1907 commission into the state of the Irish railways reveals, a lack of investment in Irish rail infrastructure was prevalent (Irish Times, 1907), which led to the farcical reality that it cost twice as much (11s 8d) to bring a tonne of Stradbally limestone to Dublin (a distance of 52 miles) than it did to import a tonne of Portland Stone (6s 6d) (Irish Times, 1907, p.7).

Additionally, Portland Stone was being extracted using prison labour, a growing number of whom were Irish political prisoners. From an Irish nationalist perspective, facing key governmental and administrative buildings in Ireland with a stone that held this symbolic sense of British identity was insulting. It also prevented any Irish material from becoming imbued with a similar sense of Irish national identity and symbolism.

Separation
Another theme in our research is the separation between those who labour to extract and dress the stone and the ‘public’ who get to enjoy it. Early 19th Century Hansard entries describe the exploitation of quarry workers and their families on Portland by a truck wage system that paid labourers in overpriced goods (flour, milk, butter, etc.), brought to the island by quarry owners, and not in cash.

Portland Stone is frequently referred to as only being suitable for the nation’s “great buildings… universities, schools, municipal buildings, office blocks, stores, banks and hotels” (HC Deb, 1965) and not for conventional purposes. For example, in 1957 one MP decried the expense of facing a power station in Yorkshire with Portland Stone because it “is never seen by anybody except the people who work there”.

Heritage and stone
As geoscientists, we often want to focus on the apolitical elements of rocks: their intrinsic evidence for the history of life and the development of our planet. But, rocks also play a role in our everyday lives and in the understanding of our own histories. GHSRs reflect this; they attempt to raise the profile of geoscience and highlight our society’s long-standing links with, and ongoing dependence upon, Earth’s resources.

However, to claim that a stone links to something as contentious as a sense of national heritage and identity, we must attempt to critically consider the whole story, and acknowledge that not everyone has the same view of what ‘Britishness’ means, or what aspects of our history we should celebrate. To human geographers, sociologists, and historians (amongst others), identity and heritage are complex, multi-layered concepts, and it would be worthwhile asking such groups to lend their expertise to discussions of the heritage value of stones.

Authors
Dr Matthew Warke is a sedimentary geologist and this study was undertaken when he was a Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews @matthewrwarke
Dr Alice Butler Warke is a human geographer and Lecturer in Sociology at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen @alice_butler31

Further reading
•  Butler-Warke, A. & Warke, M. (2021) Trans. Inst. Br. Geogr. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12462
•  Cooper, B.J. (2015) Geol. Soc. Spec. Publ. 407(1), 11-20; https://doi.org/10.1144/SP407.5
•  Hackman, G. (2014) Stone to Build London. Folly Books Ltd. 320 pp.
•  HC Deb. vol. 715 cols. 268- 79, 28 June 1965. [Online]. [Accessed 17 July 2020]. Retrieved from: https://hansard.parliament.uk/
•  Irish Railway Commission. (1907, October 15). Irish Times;  https://www.irishtimes.com/archive
•  London Pavement Geology; https://londonpavementgeology.co.uk/ (@pavementgeology)

The full version of this feature article appears below. Editor.

The symbolic power of stone

Matthew Warke and Alice Butler-Warke explore the ways stone can become imbued with symbolic notions of power, identity and heritage, using Portland Stone as an example 

On taking a trip to London, your eye will have been drawn to the white fossiliferous limestone used to clad many of the capital’s buildings. Portland Stone, a Jurassic limestone historically (and still) quarried from the Isle of Portland in Dorset, UK, has become a famous building stone used across Britain and around the world.

Keeping your eye on the fossil fauna and sedimentary textures it is possible to delineate each of the quarried horizons as you pass by St Paul’s Cathedral and other of architect Sir Christopher Wren’s ‘City Churches’. Portland Stone also faces (amongst others, see Hackman, 2014) the British Museum, Buckingham Palace, much of Trafalgar Square, Oxford Street, Regent Street, and Government offices and memorials along Whitehall, as well as Burlington House.

In 2013, Portland Stone was selected by a subgroup of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) as the first ‘Global Heritage Stone Resource’ (GHSR). There are now many GHSRs that tie strongly to specific areas, communities, buildings or applications. Defined using a range of criteria (Cooper, 2015), chiefly that the stone links to human cultural heritage, the aim of GHSRs is to spotlight a stone’s societal and cultural relevance.

The status of Portland Stone as a GHSR is supported by its use by Sir Christopher Wren, as well as in projects like the Commonwealth War Graves, which, it is argued, link the stone—albeit in an undefined way—with British national identity. The selection of Portland Stone as the first GHSR makes sense in many ways: it is a beautiful, ornamental stone used to create some of Britain’s most stunning architecture, and unarguably has tremendous significance in the country’s built and natural heritage. But is this enough? Does the prominent use of a particular stone in the construction of key state buildings and memorials automatically convey heritage value and link it to a sense of national identity?

Our exploration into the history and politics of Portland Stone shows that this view of heritage is a selective one (Butler‐Warke, A. & Warke, M., 2021). For some, the imagined sense of Britishness that the stone was originally meant to symbolise is intertwined with exclusionary notions of class and empire, and a selective vision of the past. Portland Stone does not represent the lives, experiences or histories of many who have lived alongside it.

Symbolising Britain

The story that links Portland Stone to London, and Britain more broadly, goes back to the beginning of the seventeenth century. King James VI of Scotland, whose Scottish reign had begun in 1567, ascended the throne of England and Ireland as James I in 1603. With the objective of uniting a new rapidly expanding Protestant empire, James sought to establish a new sense of ‘British’ identity.

Pamphlets, speeches and articles of the period describe James’ vision of London as the ‘New Jerusalem’. The task of fulfilling this vision fell in large part to architects, and particularly to James’ surveyor Inigo Jones [1573 – 1652] and his successor, Wren. Heavily influenced by Italian architectural styles, both Jones and Wren were ideally suited to creating a classically styled, imperial capital that featured a ‘glorious Temple’ to rival that of Rome (albeit a vision whose progress was interrupted by the Civil War). Pamphlets and artworks of the time suggest that this new Protestant temple should be built from a domestic (and therefore ‘Protestant’) stone sourced from Britain, as opposed to material sourced from predominantly Catholic continental Europe. The temple in question was St. Paul’s Cathedral and Portland Stone was the ideal material—it was sourced from southern England, could be obtained from common and Crown lands, and could be transported by sea, directly from the quarries to London.

To understand how policymakers historically viewed Portland Stone, we turned to Hansard—transcripts of Parliamentary debates held in Britain and many Commonwealth countries that date back over 200 years. By the nineteenth century, policymakers regularly debated the construction of new museums, universities, churches, and most notably new Government offices that were required to run the efficient administration of the rapidly expanding and globally dominant British Empire.

We found that Victorian-era politicians, too, looked back to frame their steps in the context of what they saw as their heritage. To those contemplating the design of buildings such as the Treasury, the Foreign and Colonial Office, the War Office and other Government buildings in central London (particularly along Whitehall), the legacy of Wren, and in particular St Paul’s Cathedral, loomed large.

When it came to building materials, therefore, only one stone would do.

Transplanting identity

London was not the only Imperial city in what was then the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland whose centre was increasingly clad in Portland Stone—others included Manchester, Liverpool, and Belfast. In Dublin, meanwhile, the use of Portland Stone became a matter of contention.

The question of ‘Home Rule’ dominated Irish politics in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Irish nationalist MPs in Westminster vehemently protested against the use of Portland Stone in Dublin at the expense of a native Irish equivalent, such as the Stradbally limestone. However, as a 1907 commission into the state of the Irish railways reveals, a lack of investment in Irish rail infrastructure was prevalent (Irish Times, 1907), which led to the farcical reality that it cost twice as much (11s 8d) to bring a tonne of Stradbally limestone to Dublin (a distance of 52 miles) than it did to import a tonne of Portland Stone (6s 6d) (Irish Times, 1907, p.7).

This was particularly galling from an Irish perspective. Just a few years earlier in 1895, in response to a question of whether the Irish Mountcharles Sandstone could be imported for use in Britain, Prime Minister William Gladstone had remarked that “the cost of carriage to London, or, indeed, to any of the eastern or central districts of Great Britain, would be prohibitive of its use” (HC Deb, 1895).  Apparently, this was a one-way problem.

From an Irish nationalist perspective, this was more than just stone-based nationalism and economic protectionism. Facing key governmental and administrative buildings in Ireland with a stone that held this symbolic sense of British identity was not only insulting, but it also prevented any Irish material from becoming imbued with a similar sense of Irish national identity and symbolism. In this way, Dublin was being refaced with an English stone, in an English fashion, by (often) English architects: it was transplanting British identity into the heart of Dublin.

The other objection Irish nationalist MPs had was that Portland Stone was being extracted by prison labour and used in government building projects. In 1907, when Irish nationalist MP Tim Healy decries the use of “English convict stone” in London, a front-bench minister refutes the claim. In response Healy exclaims, “indeed it is. I saw them quarrying it” (HC Deb, 1907).

Hansard backs up the Irish MPs’ viewpoint. As Earl Grey noted in the House in 1850:

“As long as we have public buildings in progress anywhere, the establishment at Portland will afford the means of providing useful work for a large body of convicts. The Portland stone, as we know from the magnificent cathedral which ornaments this city, is of the finest quality, and the quarries are practically inexhaustible … and the utmost facilities exist for employing convicts in quarrying and dressing it, so that it may be shipped ready for use in any buildings which may be in progress.” (HC Deb, 1850)

The national works prison on Portland was familiar to Irish nationalist politicians because a growing number of Irish political prisoners were being interned there. Viewed in this context, it is easy to see why MPs objected to the use of a stone so symbolically loaded, and intrinsically linked, with Imperial imagination and expansion.

Separation

Portland Stone has never been a particularly cheap building material. Throughout Hansard, its relative expense is consistently mentioned as a determining factor regarding its use. Another consistent theme in our research is the separation between those who labour to extract and dress the stone and the “public” who get to enjoy it. Early nineteenth century Hansard entries describe the exploitation of quarry workers and their families on Portland by a truck wage system that paid labourers in overpriced goods (flour, milk, butter, etc.) brought to the island by quarry owners and not in cash.

Portland Stone is frequently referred to as only being suitable for the nation’s “great buildings…universities, schools, municipal buildings, office blocks, stores, banks and hotels” and not for conventional purposes. In the eyes of several MPs, the stone was for enlightened and entitled viewing only. For example, in 1957 one MP decries the expense of facing a power station in Yorkshire with Portland Stone because it “is never seen by anybody except the people who work there”.

There is also a political distinction in Hansard. It is mainly conservative voices who champion the use of the stone (and its heritage value)—including lobbying by the mostly Conservative MPs who have represented Portland since 1800. In 1945, one constituent is quoted by his MP as remarking: “I have worked in the Portland Stone quarries all my life, and I am proud of it. I have always voted Conservative because I have found that when a Conservative Government was in power, there was more demand for Portland stone” (HC Deb, 1945). 

The stone had come to symbolise much of what the Conservative party at that time symbolised: patriotism, the Union and the Empire, and of a promotion of English-centric British national identity.

Heritage and stone

As geoscientists, we often want to focus on the apolitical elements of rocks: their intrinsic evidence for the history of life and the evolution of our planet. But, rocks also play a role in our everyday lives and in the understanding of our own histories. GHSRs reflect this; they attempt to raise the profile of geoscience and highlight our society’s long-standing links with, and ongoing dependence upon, Earth’s resources.

We certainly do not suggest tearing down buildings made of Portland Stone, nor do we argue against its future use. However, to claim that a stone links to something as contentious as a sense of national heritage and identity, we must attempt to critically consider the whole story, and acknowledge that not everyone has the same view of what ‘Britishness’ means, or what aspects of our history we should celebrate. To human geographers, sociologists, and historians (amongst others), identity and heritage are complex, multi-layered concepts, and it would be worthwhile asking such groups to lend their expertise to discussions of the heritage value of stones.

Authors

Matthew Warke is a sedimentary geologist and this study was undertaken when he was a Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews.

Alice Butler-Warke is a human geographer and Lecturer in Sociology at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen.

Further reading

Butler‐Warke, A. & Warke, M. (2021) Foundation stone of empire: the role of Portland Stone in ‘heritage’, commemoration, and identity. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12462 [Open access available at: https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/tran.12462]

Cooper, B.J. (2015) The ‘Global Heritage Stone Resource’ designation: past, present and future. Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 407(1), 11-20; https://doi.org/10.1144/SP407.5

Hackman, G. (2014) Stone to Build London. Folly Books Ltd. 320 pp.

HC Deb. vol.110 cols. 205-9, 12 April 1850. [Online]. [Accessed 17 July 2020].

HC Deb. vol.32 cols. 1129-31, 8 April 1895. [Online]. [Accessed 17 July 2020].

HC Deb. vol.181 cols. 868-70, 21 August 1907. [Online]. [Accessed 17 July 2020].

HC Deb. vol.414 col. 2242, 25 October 1945. [Online]. [Accessed 17 July 2020].

HC Deb. vol. 715 cols. 268- 79, 28 June 1965. [Online]. [Accessed 17 July 2020].

IUGS Subcommission: Heritage Stones; www.globalheritagestone.com

Irish Railway Commission. (1907, October 15). Irish Times;  https://www.irishtimes.com/archive

London Pavement Geology; https://londonpavementgeology.co.uk/ (@pavementgeology)

Share this article

Download PDF