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Historic Environment Scotland (HES), a non-departmental public body of the Scottish Government charged with safeguarding the nation’s historic environment, is directly responsible for 335 sites of national significance, most of which are built from stone. Similar to other heritage organisations, HES needs a system that can store and present conservation and maintenance information for historic sites; ideally, the same system could be used to plan effective programmes of maintenance and repair. To meet this need, the British Geological Survey (BGS) has worked with HES to develop an integrated digital site assessment system that provides a refined survey process for stone-built (and other) historic sites. Based on the BGS System for Integrated Geoscience Mapping (BGS▪SIGMA)—an integrated workflow underpinned by a geo-spatial platform for data capture and interpretation—the system is built on top of ESRI’s ArcGIS software, and underpinned by a relational database. Users can populate custom-built data entry forms to record maintenance issues and repair specifications for architectural elements ranging from individual blocks of stone to entire building elevations. Photographs, sketches, and digital documents can be linked to architectural elements to enhance the usability of the data. Predetermined data fields and supporting dictionaries constrain the input parameters to ensure a high degree of consistency and facilitate data extraction and querying. Presenting the data within a GIS provides a versatile planning tool for scheduling works, specifying materials, identifying skills needed for repairs, and allocating resources. The overall condition of a site can be monitored accurately over time by repeating the survey at regular intervals (e.g. every 5 years). Other datasets can be linked to the database and other geospatially referenced datasets can be superimposed in GIS, adding considerably to the scope and utility of the system. The system can be applied to any geospat

Scotland has one of the richest legacies of traditional (pre-1919) buildings and other stone structures of any country in the world, but the building stone industry that created that legacy is now a small fraction of its former size and struggling to survive as the use of imported stone continues to grow. This report presents an objective review of the building stone industry in Scotland today. It includes: a brief synopsis of its history; evidence of its current fragile state, and the threat this poses to the historic and natural environments; an analysis of the potential for the industry to grow, and the benefits that a stronger indigenous industry could bring; a description of factors that are holding back its development (‘barriers to growth’); and a list of practical steps that can be taken by the industry and other stakeholders to encourage and facilitate growth.

This report presents the outcomes of a project commissioned by Historic Scotland to determine, using a combination of archival records and geological evidence, whether blocks of sandstone in Iona Nunnery (a Scheduled Monument on the island of Iona) came from Carsaig quarry (a long-disused quarry on the south coast of Mull). The report also considers the feasibility of sourcing new stone to use in future repairs to the nunnery from Carsaig quarry and from the remains of nearby Carsaig pier. Details of the most suitable commercially available stones from elsewhere in the UK are also provided, should it prove not possible or not practical to obtain new stone from Carsaig quarry or Carsaig pier.

This report describes the outcomes of a project commissioned by Historic Scotland to identify suitable stone to use in forthcoming repairs to the building known as The Engine Shed, in Stirling, which will become Historic Scotland’s National Conservation Centre. A Building Stone Assessment has been conducted on three samples of sandstone supplied by Historic Scotland – two from different parts of The Engine Shed and one from the recently demolished Seaforth Place Bridge in Stirling – with a view to assessing whether stone recovered from the demolished bridge could be considered amongst the closest-matching currently available stones and therefore a suitable replacement stone. This assessment has shown that stone from the bridge is amongst the closest-matching stones, and should provide a good replacement stone for walling and copestones in The Engine Shed provided weathered stone is first removed from the recycled blocks and any blocks required to perform a load-bearing function are subjected to a geotechnical test to confirm they are sufficiently strong. Drumhead sandstone, which is currently quarried near Denny, should also provide a good replacement stone.

The British Geological Survey (BGS) has conducted a survey of the building stones and roofing slates in 172 buildings that lie within, and face onto, the Townscape Heritage Initiative (THI) area in Falkirk town centre. The survey was commissioned by Falkirk Council and was conducted by the BGS Building Stone Team in January and February 2013. This report describes the outcomes of the survey. The report also has sections describing a brief assessment of historical quarrying activity in the Falkirk area and the results of stone matching for all the different building stones and slates recorded during the survey. The survey results are presented in this report as a set of maps, but the ‘raw’ survey data have been delivered independently of this report in a Microsoft Excel table and in a shape file suitable for GIS applications. A folder of digital images of the surveyed building elevations has also been delivered independently of this report. Twenty different building stones were recorded in the THI area: thirteen are buff sandstone, two are orange sandstone, one is limestone, and four are granite. All of the buff sandstones were sourced from Carboniferous strata that were laid down between 350 and 300 million years ago. Seven come from quarries in the Midland Valley of Scotland and six are from northern England.

The village of Killin lies in an area of dramatic landscape and mountain scenery. The use of local stone in the buildings gives a direct connection to this landscape and reflects the local geology, comprising mostly metamorphic rocks of Precambrian age –dominantly limestone, meta-sandstone, mica schist and meta-igneous rocks. All of these (with the exception of the Loch Tay Limestone which was used for soil improvement) were used in buildings and structures within the Killin Conservation Area. The stone masonry in the village is classified into five categories; (1) cottages (mostly harled) built of random rubble from field and river boulders and surface rock outcrops, (2) two storey buildings with irregular coursed rubble walls of meta-sandstone and mica schist with large dressings of silver-grey slabs of actinolite schist, (3) and (4) larger late 19th century buildings with dressings of Central Belt sandstone used in combination with squared rubble walling of local actinolite schist and metasandstone. The 5th masonry category represents relatively late buildings constructed using distinctive imported stone types (e.g. whinstone, granite, red sandstone). These categories are broadly chronological in order and reflect the development of architectural form along with improving transportation of materials over time.