King of the Purbeck Stone Age

Treleven Haysom has been quarrying stone on the Isle of Purbeck for over 60 years – now he’s written the definitive book about it

- Treleven Haysom

Eleven generations of Treleven Haysom’s family have been working with Purbeck stone in Dorset since 1698.

Still today, his Langton Matravers quarry provides the finest English stone for buildings from Westminster Abbey to Windsor Castle.

In late Jurassic times, around 150 million years ago, the sea covered what is now south Dorset with beds of limestone.

First, Portland stone was laid down, followed by Purbeck stone, as the sea turned into a lagoon. The uppermost bed of all was called Purbeck Marble.

Throughout the Middle Ages, hard, polishable stones, as against softer stones, were called marble and the men who worked them marblers. In medieval England, Purbeck was synonymous with marble in the same way Carrara in Italy has been associated with marble since the Renaissance.

Strictly speaking, Purbeck Marble isn’t in fact marble. Today, scientific geology reserves the term marble for a particular group of metamorphosed limestones.

Still, Purbeck Marble was hugely prized here from the second half of the 12th century. The zenith occurred in the 13th century, before a late-14th-century reduction and an almost complete fizzling out by the end of the 16th century.

The high point is Henry III’s lavish use of Purbeck Marble in his rebuilding of Westminster Abbey in about 1245, complete with the famous Cosmati Pavement and Edward the Confessor’s shrine, where more exotic types of stone were set in Purbeck Marble.