‘BBC: The Portland Stonemasons’

    

If you don’t check on BBC Archive occasionally, you are missing humanizing films that put before your eyes short slices-of-life from the past eight decades in the British Isles. Some are heartening, but some can be heartbreaking—especially Fyfe Robertson’s reports—but they show us how many modern changes came to be. And just because the content mostly is filmed in the United Kingdom does not at all mean the American viewer cannot recognize his own society.

As the Beeb puts it: “You have now entered the BBC Archive, a time machine that will transport you back to the golden age of TV to educate, entertain, and enlighten you with classic clips from the BBC vaults.”

The documentary, titled The Portland Stonemasons, from the series “Look Stranger: Heart of Stone,” linked above, was first broadcast October 13, 1971. It was added to the Archive for our pleasure two months ago. Description:

Cecil “Skylark” Duston is a stonemason who works the cream-white building stone from quarries which scar his home of Portland at the southernmost tip of Dorset. Years ago he helped to reface London’s Regent Street, more recently to create our new city centres. Skylark is a craftsman, his tools are basically the same as those used centuries ago by the men who first learned to fashion stone. He believes that there will always be a place for the mason in spite of new methods.

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