From the Killing Fields to Canterbury: the life of a stonemason

In January 1995, Simon Warrack was travelling along the dusty roads of Cambodia with an armoured escort on his way to the ancient temples at Angkor.

Having weaved through a series of wooden houses, the road opened up into expansive rice fields.

Out of nowhere Warrack spotted ‘a couple of men . . . aiming AK-47s’ at his convoy.

Simon Warrack 

The following moments were filled with RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] and machine-gun fire. Their escort was too far ahead to help, so all that was left to do was floor the accelerator and put as much distance between them and the gunmen as possible.

A car trailing them by ten minutes carrying a Texan university professor, her husband, interpreter and driver were attacked by the same men.

The professor and interpreter were killed. The husband survived, wounded, by playing dead.

The Khmer Rouge were still making their presence felt despite the fall of the regime.

Warrack is not a soldier, nor is he employed in any role that should put him in an active military zone. He is a stonemason and this is but one of the almost unbelievable experiences that have coloured the varied career he describes in this fascinating book.

If you think stonemasonry is a boring trade, this book will be enlightening. In fact, it is a trade that will allow you to travel the globe, have dinners with princes in the desert and work on the most sacred buildings in the world.

Warrack started his training in London at The Building Crafts College, before moving on to Canterbury Cathedral, the magnificent Doge’s Palace in Venice and Rome’s Trevi Fountain. He proves that masonry and conservation are a universal language as he works on the stelae of Ethiopia, temples in the United Arab Emirates and trains Syrian masons-to-be.

His passion for honouring the traditions and skills of masons who came before infuses every page. It is astonishing how much building methods today closely resemble those of thousands of years ago.

The same respect for the past has often been missed in previous conservation attempts, where politics and finances have got in the way.

However, what stands out is how Warrack leads his teams to work with the locals who cherish these sacred sites so a harmony of craftsmanship can be found that will transcend any language barrier.

The effect is deeply humbling. By the end you wonder if there is a significant heritage site to which Warrack has not given his immense skill . . . Rome’s Colosseum is about the only one that springs to mind.

This is a compelling manifesto for the conservation of traditional skills, the sharing of knowledge and a respect for our global heritage.

In a world of AI, steel and concrete, books like this have never felt more important.