DAVID CRAIG

It’s mid February in the village of Church Brough, and the new-built fold and the stone cone inside it are rising towards their final shape. The grassed space is bounded by the village school, a metal fence surrounding the site where a new classroom extension is being built; the road north to Brough; a line of trees; and the river. Short days are spattered with freezing rain. Andy Goldsworthy and his assistant Tom are wearing industrial gloves and chap, chap, chapping with slater’s hammer, lump-hammer, and cold chisels.

Once completed, the cone will weigh 3 tons and is 30cm at the base, bulging to 70cm, tapering again to 50cm - or thereabouts. ‘I never use a spirit level’, says Andy. ‘And I use the tape-measure just to check from time to time. If you use only your eye, it allows the thing to be…’ - he feels for the words - ‘it’s not perfect. I aim for perfection - I never achieve it. It’s the surprise that keeps me going, making this form that obsesses me.’ It’s a form that has enthralled Goldsworthy since he worked as a gardener in Brough in the seventies and first saw the Nine Standards, an impressive line of cairns on the fell above the road from Nateby over to Swaledale. They’re just visible today, above a dip in the trees to the south.

Onlookers come past on the road. A white-haired woman asks ‘What’s this?’ Andy: ‘I’m a sculptor, and I’m making a cone here.’ ‘Good. It’s always nice to see craftsmen at work. And that stone’ll be from Stainmore.’ Which it is -
limestone from the Buckles’ quarry near Tan Hill, plus sandstone from Keith Brogden’s quarry at Ravenseat over towards Keld. Piles of it lie about to make the cone and the surrounding wall (with a window in it at child’s-eye height) which will be built by Steve Allen from Tebay.

At break-time children are brought out by their teacher for a question session. ‘How big will it be?’ ‘How long will it take you?’ After school, girls’ and boys’ heads keep popping up above the river wall, asking ‘Is it finished yet?’ Inside the school the children have created a superb exhibition of clay and gravel models and ink and pencil drawings inspired by Goldsworthy’s books. Later that afternoon a female teacher comes to see the cone, and hugs it. A male teacher comes and tests it with a shove. ‘Interesting’, says Andy, ‘the responses of the two sexes.’

The hard physical work goes on. Triangular pieces a foot or more long are roughly shaped, to be laid with their points at or beyond the centre of the circle. If they stick out too far, they’re chipped to size. If they don’t lie flat, their undersides are trimmed. Constantly Goldsworthy and Tom slap the topmost layer to check the secure lie of it. Practical problems crop up all day. Dick Capel of the East Cumbria Countryside Project arrives to report that when the sandstone was being delivered for the next fold, 15 kilometres down the Eden Valley at Bolton, the verge was so soft that the legs of the trailer sank in a foot and a half and the second pallet of stone had to be left outside the old fold. Also, the stone here is running out and the next delivery can’t be made until tomorrow. As light fails, the workmen building the school extension make a bonfire of scrap timber. Watching Goldsworthy curiously they say ‘we’ve got some cement left if you need it.’ He declines gracefully.

Next day, before the wallers arrive, the cone is finished off with three complete stone discs. To prevent wanton dismantling, Andy drills a hole through the uppermost six layers, drops a rod through with a threaded end capped by a nut, and melts lead in a pot to seal the rod in place. Before the fold can be built up though, foot-and-mouth breaks out and stops the work.

Postscript: seven months later foot and mouth disease was still flaring up, especially in the area now known as the Penrith spur. The good news is that Andy Goldsworthy was able to visit the Church Brough School on 13th September to open the new classroom extension, which has been named after him.