This industrial film documents the repair of Grey's Monument in Newcastle. The film follows the quarrying and stone shaping processes, and the setting of a replacement stone panel at the top of the column. Looking North from Grey Street, Grey's Monument is surrounded by scaffolding. A sign on the scaffolding reads “Rutherford Newcastle”. A worker drills away a section of one of the column’s stone blocks with a pneumatic chisel. Another stands beside a shaped replacement block of...

This industrial film documents the repair of Grey's Monument in Newcastle. The film follows the quarrying and stone shaping processes, and the setting of a replacement stone panel at the top of the column. Looking North from Grey Street, Grey's Monument is surrounded by scaffolding. A sign on the scaffolding reads “Rutherford Newcastle”. A worker drills away a section of one of the column’s stone blocks with a pneumatic chisel. Another stands beside a shaped replacement block of stone. Views of cranes at the “H.H. Harrison Ltd West View Quarry”. A large stone block is lifted from the quarry floor. The stone is cut by machines in a warehouse building. Close-up of the teeth of a circular saw. A slab of stone is driven along a conveyor belt into a water cooled circular saw and cut in two. The stone, now on a flat-bed trolley, is scraped into shape by a machine. A close-up of this process is shown. Two workers manipulate the shaped stone block with a hoist, and then begin to work on it with pneumatic chisels. Back in Newcastle, a worker fixes bolts into a piece of shaped stone and attaches an iron ring. The stone block is attached to a crane’s hook and winched up through the scaffold. A worker clambers, without a harness, up the scaffold. Down below, a man smokes a pipe and looks upwards. The shaped block is eventually hoisted to the top of the tower. Overhead eye-view angle shots of the monument illustrate its great height. At the top of the monument, a team of workers hoist the stone with a chain ratchet. A stonemason chisels out a notch in a block with a hammer and chisel. A worker demonstrates where the shaped stone panel will be bolted to the monument by pointing. Mortar is applied with a trowel. The slab is winched into position, disengaged from its hoist, hammered, and rendered. A mixture is pumped from a bucket with a hand pump, through a rubber hose, behind the newly fixed stone panel.