Weymouth College, home to some of the best stonemasonry training courses in the UK, will be hosting its annual Boss Stone Carving Competition, which tests the skills of current stonemasonry and building conservation students. This year’s theme is ‘1914-1918’. The contest will be held at the Dorset Skills Centre in Poundbury and runs from 9am on Wednesday 22nd April to midday on Friday 24th April, with final judging and presentation of prizes taking place shortly afterwards from 1:30pm-2pm.
The Stonemasonry team are encouraging people to visit the event, watch the students in the throes of carving and to see the amazing display of traditional skills. A boss stone is a carving that forms the meeting point of several converging vaulting ribs. They remain some of the finest surviving medieval stone carvings still in existence. Students come up with their own designs to include foliage, animals, human figures and all manner of scenes and decorations. They then have just 2.5 days to carve their own boss stone from a block to exacting standards before their creations are put before the keen eye of expert judges, who will be marking on attention to detail and creative ability. Last year, the winning students were lucky enough to be congratulated by HRH Prince Charles, who was on a brief tour of developments in Poundbury.
Previous winners have gone on to design and build various public commissions, including the planned monument to Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, the 19th Century anti-slavery campaigner and MP for Weymouth. The competition, which started in 1994 at the College’s old Newstead Road site before relocating to Poundbury in 2010, is supported by national companies including Hanson Bath eymouth College is a high achieving and inclusive FE college with over 7,000 students. from across Dorset and the South West of England, as well as overseas. It offers a diverse range of courses, excellent facilities and a team of dedicated and experienced staff who provide guidance and support, as well as quality teaching For more information please call 01305 761100 or email [email protected] & Portland Stone, Worshipful Company of Masons, William Anelay Ltd and J P Masonry Supplies.
For more information please visit weymouthcollegestonemasonry.com. There will be live coverage of the event on Facebook and Twitter. Our stonemasonry students have won the UK Masonry Skills Challenge for 6 out of the last 7 years.
