The surviving West Front was originally built over 250 years ago, so it was not an easy task for our restoration team to source the right type of stone to match the stone used for construction. Some parts of the building had been lost over the years, so it was important that any new material should be a good match for the surviving primary fabric.
The local quarries that once provided the magnesian limestone to build monuments like this are worked out landfill sites today, and although the same geological type is still quarried in the area, different beds with different characteristics are being worked today.
Much therefore depends on the bed or face the quarry happens to be working and on the goodwill of quarry managers who, after all, run a commercial extraction business not a stone-matching service. Nevertheless, with goodwill and the right timing perfect matches can still be found if you know where to look, and we are fortunate that in this case some excellently matching stone was obtained and the results were outstanding.