Making a Memorial
Most families who write to me about a headstone are doing it for the first time, and often not long after a funeral. This page is the slow version of what I'd tell you if you came out to the workshop: how long things take, who has to agree to what, how we find the words, and how to look after the stone once it's standing.
Nothing here needs deciding today. Read it, put it down, and come back to it when you're ready.
Waiting for the Ground
A grave settles. The soil that goes back in after a burial is loose, and over the following months it sinks, sometimes by a hand's width or more. A headstone fixed too early can lean, or crack the foundation under it, so I don't fix one sooner than six months after a burial.
Making a headstone takes me four to six months from the day you approve the drawing, so in practice the two waits run side by side. If you write to me in the first weeks, the stone is usually ready around the time the ground is.
I take on about thirty memorials a year and cut every one of them myself, so bookings made in autumn often run into the following spring. I won't promise any memorial in under eight weeks. If a date matters to you, an anniversary or a family gathering, tell me at the start and I'll say honestly whether it can be met.
Nothing is paid until you've seen and approved the full-size drawing. Then there's a 30% deposit, and the balance when the stone is fixed, by bank transfer or cash.
- Earliest fixing
- 6 months after burial
- Making a headstone
- 4-6 months
- Memorials a year
- About 30
- Your quote
- Within 5 working days
Permissions and Paperwork
Two permissions are needed before any stone goes into a cemetery. The first comes from the family: the grave owner gives written consent for the memorial. If you're not sure whose name the grave is registered in, the cemetery office can tell you, and I can tell you what to ask.
The second comes from the cemetery. I prepare a drawing to scale showing the stone, its sizes and the wording, and I submit it to the parish or council that runs the graveyard. That paperwork is mine to handle, and I follow it up so you don't have to.
Rules differ from one graveyard to the next, and they're worth knowing early. The ones I meet most often:
- A maximum height for upright stones, which can differ between an old parish churchyard and a newer council cemetery a mile away.
- Lawn sections, where only a headstone at the head is allowed, with no kerbs and no slab over the grave.
- Limits on the stone itself, or a preference for a native stone in an older churchyard.
- Whether a flat ledger stone is allowed at all.
- Set days or hours for fixing, kept clear of funerals.
If a rule rules out what you'd hoped for, I'll tell you before a single letter is drawn, not after.
I fix memorials within 80 km of Kilkenny, which covers Carlow, Laois, Tipperary, Waterford and most of Wexford. Further than that is possible, with travel charged at €0.60 per km beyond the 80.
There are a few things I don't make, and it's kinder to say so plainly at the start: polished black granite or any mirror-polished stone, photographs or ceramic portraits set into the stone, and hearts, open books or other shapes cut from a template. Every letter is cut by hand with a mallet and chisel. Nothing is sandblasted, laser-etched or routed.
Help With the Words
Most families arrive with more words than a stone can hold, and that's only natural. We work through them together, by email or at the workshop, until what's left is what matters: a name, the dates, perhaps a townland, or a line that belonged to the person.
A headstone includes up to 120 letters, which is more than it sounds. A name, two dates and a short line rarely come near it. Fewer words can be cut larger and deeper, and deep letters stay readable for longer as the limestone weathers.
Irish and English sit well together on one stone. I cut the síneadh fada by hand like any other stroke, and I'll go through the spelling of a line in Irish with you rather than guess at it.
If you'd like a line of verse or scripture, send me the few you're weighing up. I'll draw the ones that fit, so you can see how each one sits on the stone before you decide.
Many headstones are made for one name and carry two or three in the end. I plan for that from the first drawing. The layout keeps a measured space below the first inscription, so a name added in ten or thirty years is cut in the same alphabet, on the same margins, and sits there as if it had always been meant to. Because it was.
- Headstone, fixed
- €2,900-€3,800
- Letters included
- Up to 120
- Gold leaf, 23.5 carat
- €4 a letter
Ledger Stones
A ledger is a flat slab laid over the whole grave, rather than a stone standing at its head. Mine are Kilkenny limestone, 1800 by 750 mm, with a chamfered edge and the lettering laid out across the face so there's room for a family's names over the years.
You'll find old ledgers in Irish churchyards and church floors, worn nearly smooth where people have walked over them, and still legible wherever the cutting went deep enough.
I named the workshop for them. A ledger is the plainest test of lettering there is: it's read from above, in every light and every weather, and passed by for a very long time. If the letters hold up on a ledger, they'll hold up anywhere.
A ledger takes the same four to six months to make as a headstone, and waits for the same settled ground. Some cemeteries don't allow them, so I check before we go any further.
- Size
- 1800 x 750 mm
- Stone
- Kilkenny limestone
- Price
- From €3,600
- Making
- 4-6 months
Adding a Name
When someone is to join a family stone, I cut the new lines in the cemetery, with the stone standing where it has always stood. There's no lifting it out, no taking it away to a yard, and no machine.
I match the new letters by eye to the old ones: the same alphabet, the same weight of stroke, the same depth of cut, and the same paint or gold. Lettering that has stood for decades has softened at its edges, and I work the new letters so the added name sits beside the first without looking out of place.
The visit is €180, and each letter is €14. A first name and surname of fourteen letters comes to €180 plus €196, so €376 in all. Gilding in 23.5 carat gold leaf adds €4 a letter.
The grave owner's written consent is needed for an addition too, and I handle the cemetery's paperwork just as I would for a new stone.
If the original inscription was cut by machine, sandblasted or routed, I won't re-letter over it. I'll look at the stone, or a good photo of it, and tell you honestly whether a hand-cut name will sit well beside what's there.
- Cemetery visit
- €180
- Each letter
- €14
- Gold leaf
- Add €4 a letter
Caring for the Stone
Limestone looks after itself far better than people expect. What harms a stone most is too much help.
- A soft brush and plain water, only when it needs it. A bucket and a soft bristle or nylon brush, nothing harder.
- No bleach and no household cleaners. They leave salts in the stone that crystallise as they dry and lift the surface, limestone most of all.
- No pressure washers. They strip the paint, open the grain and round off the sharp arrises that make a cut letter readable.
- No wire brushes, scourers or scraping at lichen. Slow lichen on old limestone does very little harm. Scrubbing does more.
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Cleaning
Water
A soft brush, a bucket, and nothing else in it.
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Repainting
15-25 years
The letters are cleaned out and repainted in the cemetery, in an enamel matched to the first.
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Regilding
15-25 years
Gold leaf on a sheltered stone can go longer. When it's time, it's laid again in place.
Take your time. There's no deadline on grief, and none on a stone.
When you'd like to begin, write to me with the name or names, any words you're thinking of, the cemetery, and a photo of the grave if a stone is already there. I'll reply with a quote within five working days, and there's nothing to sign or pay until you've seen the full-size drawing.
Every memorial price sits on the work and prices page, and the workshop hours and winter closing are on the contact page.