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Weymouth College Stonemasonry
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Clavell Tower Project
Article by Alastair Dick-Cleland of the Landmark Trust
“The Landmark Trust, one of the UK’s largest building preservation charities, was very keen to use the saving of Clavell Tower at Kimmeridge as a training opportunity. We were therefore delighted to be able to involve students from Weymouth College on the Architectural Stone Conservation foundation degree course. They were given the opportunity to visit the site on several occasions during the course of the works to see first hand some of the issues involved in the complex process of recording the tower prior to dismantling it, stone by stone, and then rebuilding it 25m further inland, and to see the carving of the missing Portland stone embellishments.
In particular, two students, Gordon Pipe and John Goodliffe took up the offer to actually work alongside the main contractor’s masons helping both to dismantle and then re-erect the tower in its new position, and their input into this process was of benefit to both them and the project. Furthermore, both Gordon and John adopted different aspects of the Clavell Tower project as their personal project subject, and both produced very thorough and well-researched reports which also increased Landmark’s understanding of Clavell Tower.”
