The people who built in stone
Large stone buildings, such as churches, castles, town walls and bridges, depended on skilled stonemasons. The work was heavy and technical, and it required planning on a scale few other crafts did. A cathedral could take generations to complete, so the knowledge and organization of the masons mattered as much as any single person’s design.
Types of mason
Not every mason did the same job. Historians commonly distinguish a few roles, though the names and divisions varied by region.
- Rough masons or wallers built plain walling from rubble or roughly dressed stone, often with mortar.
- Freemasons were those who worked “free stone,” fine-grained stone such as limestone or sandstone that could be carved freely in any direction. They cut precise blocks and carved moldings, tracery and sculpture. The origin of the term freemason is debated; one common explanation is the freestone itself.
- Setters laid the dressed stones in the wall, using lifting gear and mortar.
- Carvers specialized in figures, foliage and decorative detail, though in many cases masons did both structural and carved work.
- Quarrymen extracted stone and roughly shaped it at the source to reduce the weight carried to the site.
In a large project, the masons were joined by carpenters, who made scaffolding, centering for arches and roofs, as well as smiths, glaziers, plumbers, laborers and carters.
The master mason
The person in charge of the design and execution of a building was often the master mason, though titles and responsibilities varied. A master mason could be both architect and site manager. He prepared plans, worked out proportions, made templates for moldings and arches, selected stone, hired and paid workers, and supervised quality. Many seem to have reached the position after years of training on practical work, rather than through formal schooling.
Medieval design relied heavily on geometry. Masons used compasses, squares, straightedges and plumb lines to lay out plans and elevations, and they developed rules of thumb for proportions. Large drawings could be incised on a plaster floor or board to work out details at full scale, and a few parchment drawings survive. The result was the pointed arches and ribbed vaults characteristic of Gothic work, as well as medieval engineering solutions such as flying buttresses.
Master masons were sometimes well paid and respected, and a few are known by name, though most are not. Some masons moved from site to site, which helps explain how styles spread across regions.
The lodge
On a major building site, the masons worked from a lodge, a temporary building, often a wooden shed or shelter built against the growing structure. Here they kept tools, cut and carved stone sheltered from weather, stored templates and drawings, ate and rested, and received instruction. The word also came to describe the working community of masons at a site.
The lodge acted as an organizing center. The master mason assigned tasks, checked templates against finished stones, and handled wages. A cathedral chapter or other patron paid for materials and labor from its accounts. Where building accounts survive, they show names, wages, days worked and materials purchased, and they are a main source for how sites operated.
Over time, lodges also developed customs and, in some places, regulations. Late medieval ordinances in parts of Germany and Britain set rules about training, wages and conduct among masons. The relationship between these lodges and the much later fraternal organizations that adopted the term Freemasons is a matter for historians and is not a simple line of descent; the modern societies drew on medieval imagery, but medieval masons’ lodges were working groups rather than secret societies.
Masons’ marks
Many medieval stones carry small incised symbols, called masons’ marks. These are typically simple geometric signs: lines, crosses, arrows or shapes combined in an individual pattern. The most common explanation is that they identified the mason who cut a particular stone, which helped when payment was by piecework and let a master check the work and trace errors. Other uses, such as marking the position in the building where a block belonged, are also suggested for some marks.
Not all marks served the same purpose, and not all sites used them in the same way. Some buildings have many; others have few. Marks should not be read as signatures in the modern sense, nor as secret codes. Historians use them to estimate how many masons worked on a building, and to follow possible movements of workers between projects, with caution.
Training and working life
Like other trades, masonry was learned through apprenticeship, often with a master’s team on a site. The apprentice moved from basic dressing of stone to more complex cutting and templates. Skills were demonstrated by making a piece of work for approval. Over the years, masons developed strong bodies and often hard lives; dust, falls, and heavy loads were constant hazards, and accidents are recorded in some accounts.
Pay was often by day, with wages lower in winter because of shorter days, and building generally paused when frost threatened to damage fresh mortar. Many projects slowed or stopped during wars, money shortages or epidemics, and the labor shortage after the Black Death affected some projects in the 14th century.
Tools and methods
Mason tools included hammers, mallets, chisels, punches, picks, saws, squares and levels. Cranes powered by treadwheels, as well as winches, pulleys and ramps, raised blocks into place. Mortar was made with lime and sand. Timber scaffolding was lashed or fitted into holes left in the wall.
The result of this coordinated labor is visible today in a rural parish church as much as a great abbey, which shows how widely the trade’s skills were distributed. The same skills show up across a wide range of sacred architecture, from small chapels to great abbeys.