Stonemason

Imagine being able to work on a castle, a mansion or a Victorian tenement! You'll use your manual skills to carve blocks of stone, or lay and fit stonework into place on building projects.

You'll normally work as either a banker mason in a workshop, or a fixer mason on site. The skills needed for each overlap, but the focus of your job would be different.

Its really rewarding to know you're keeping traditional skills alive and preserving buildings for future generations.

As a banker mason, you'll:

• follow design instructions

• carve and shape stone

• give stone a textured or polished finish (known as dressing)

• use hand and power tools

As a fixer mason, you'll:

• build walls

• fit cladding using specialised materials and methods

• repair stonework

In either specialism you might:

• repair old buildings and monuments

• carve or repair statues or headstones

• make and fit stonework such as window frames, archways and ornamental garden pieces

As the job is so varied, you'll learn to work with many materials such as sandstone, limestone, slate, marble and granite.

It would be essential to follow health and safety rules at all times.

Green job 

In this job you'll be doing work to help the environment by:

• using sustainable materials

• preserving and saving buildings for the future

Find out more about green jobs.

• Stone Federation Great Britain – Looking for a career in the stone industry?

• Scottish stonemasonry at the White House, USA – YouTube video

• Meet Charlie, a stonemason in Oban – YouTube video

• Historic Scotland apprenticeships in stonemasonry – YouTube video