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It’s part of Harriet Frazers’ involvement to match the stonecarver/letterer to the client. She runs a SORT of dating agency. So it was, one high summer day, Lorna had her first meeting with Teucer Wilson under the Walnut tree at Wood Cottage. Teucer, as I’m sure all you classicists in the audience, congregation, whatever you are, will recall, was named after the archer in "The Iliad". Homer tells us he had "craft in the bows use" but the chisel was Teucers destiny. Initially trained in Weymouth and sharpened up during a five year stint at the Richard Kindersley workshops in London. Teucer and Lorna hit it off. Thank God! The design was discussed, the "flourishes".

The shape of the stone had already been decided. Nick had chosen the shape. He was, as you know, remarkable in those last weeks. But WHICH stone. Teucer had brought samples of wonderful stones and we lined them up in the churchyard and stared. I’ve never been to a casting session quite like that.

The questions were – which stone best fitted this cemetery? This environment? This church ? Which stone would look best, most at home among all the other stones ? Lorna made her mind up and then a few days later changed it. Another flash of indecision in the Clay/Heilbron relationship! But, finally, Lorna and the girls agreed that Nicks’ headstone would be carved out of Kilkenny Limestone.

Marble has been extracted from the quarries that surround Kilkenny since the early eighteenth century. An abundance of marble. The streets were paved with it. The Brompton Oratory, Wells and Worcester Cathedrals, the Royal Exchange in Glasgow, Lorna, were embellished with it.The main quarries – Archersgrove and Butlersgrove produced three specific types – shellyblack, pure black and dark grey. The blacker it was the more prized was the marble. Though "marble" is a bit of a misnomer. It is not a "true" marble. It’s undergone "metamorphism". The crinoid fragments are bound by a matrix of calcium carbonate cement and mud.

12 miles from Kilkenny at Paulstown, on the Carlow-Dublin road, deep, deep into the Clogrenan formation is the Kellymount quarry. Ten generations of Feeley brothers have worked this quarry. 200 years of craft experience. "Feeleystone", for that is what the firm is called, market their stone as Irish Blue Limestone. That is what Nicks’ stone is. It was extracted from beneath the "clay horizons", that is what they are called, and despatched to Teucer Wilson on February 2nd this year. I’d imagined something out of Conrad or Melville. Nicks’ stone held fast on a wind tossed, white horsed, tumultuous sea crossing from Dun Laughrie to Fishguard. But no! "Feeleystone dot com" inform me that the carrier was "Intel Couriers". Ah, the lost romance!

So it was, one day in late February, chisel in hand. Teucer Wilson drew a breath and faced the raw Irish Blue Limestone. Homer tells us that Teucer was " a good man in the close of standing combat" that he cried out when frustrated in battle "see how the divinity cuts across the intention". Concentration. Contemplation. One chance to get it right!

Meanwhile in Putney, Snape and Sibton we drew OUR biggest breath. The design for the stone had been sent to the "incumbent" of this church – the Rev Phillip Miller. Had Phillip raised any objection we would have to put in a "petition For Faculty" to the diocese. Shell out a hundred notes and well, it would be in the lap of the God. Phillip, thank God, loved the design and wrote to Lorna and Harriet saying so. He visited Snape with his wife Dorothy and is lining up to be something of a champion of the work of Harriet and "Memorials By Artists". Thankyou Phillip and Dorothy.

So – it was full chisel ahead!

A few weeks ago we all travelled to Teucers’ workshop in Norfolk to view the completed Headstone. He handed over his chisel to Lorna and the girls and three marks were made at the stones’ base. An "L", an "Ella", an "M" with a star. You won’t see these marks, they’re in the earth with Nick.

Some time later I asked Gilly what meaning the stone had for her. This day. She said that to her "The stone is a door between the past and the future. A meeting of the past and the present. It contains the past, we put it up in the present and it goes forward into the future." . Well, that’ll do. I can only add that I agree with the man who wrote that "there are few better ways of commemorating the dead than contributing to the life of a craft" and I KNOW that Nick would agree with that.

It’s been said that it requires an exceptional person to commission a headstone and an exceptional person to execute it. Lorna and Teucer have been those persons. A boulder somewhere is inscribed "Art should speak to us across centuries. It is a means by which we break bread with the dead".

Dennis Potter, with the sharpened acuity of the dying, memorably described the Peach blossom outside the window of his sick room as being the "peachiest" the most "blossomiest" you could ever imagine.

Put your hand on Nicks’ stone. It’s the "stoniest" stone you could ever imagine. The "Feeleyist" stone you could ever imagine feeling. Nick probably wouldn’t thank me for comparing him with a carboniferous lump of old fossil. But, I’d suggest, the nature of the stone, its’ composition is a testament to who Nick was. Shiny, beguiling, glossy, even glamorous on the outside. But inside – quirky mysteries, teasing ambiguities, Crinoidal complications.

So, where marble once lay under Clay, now Clay lies under marble. We have a lamentation in letters for a man we loved and miss – DREADFULLY and when I think of Lorna and this stone, I’m reminded of the inscription, the encomium, written by his widow in 1830 on the headstone of the critic and essayist, William Hazlitt, " This stone is raised by one whose heart is with him in his grave.

And the wonder of it all is that 350 million years from now. Long after this species has wiped itself out and, yet again, the tectonic plates have yawned and groaned and shifted and this little Suffolk valley will perhaps have hauled itself down near the Equator again, cheek by jowl with perhaps Katmandu or even Kilkenny. Nick and his headstone. This sparkling little Church and all who rest in its’ magical churchyard will have slipped into the carboniferous soup and become the fossils, the crinoids, the marbles that some future species will excavate, wonder at, polish and inscribe.

Courtesy of Dandalf.com