Tom Wiggins, Letter Carver & Writer

I met your folks at a church in St Albans.  Moon warned me they'd be quirky.   'Quirky how?' I asked.   'They're theatre people,' he replied.  He winked, gave me the church address and his business card and sent me on my way.   I'd loaded the van the day before.  Headstone, concrete shoe, sack truck, wheelbarrow, fixing kit.  Double-checked for things that are easy to forget.  Everything secured.  Okay, good to go. Your Granddad's grave was near the east end of the church.  It was marked with a little plaque and I set the wheelbarrow down next to it and began unloading the spades.   There was chatter and the squeaking of chairs and the blowing of instruments from inside the church.  Then all of a sudden, after a brief silence, the interior erupted with music.  A brass band flew into a rendition of Abba's Take a Chance on Me.  The bottom of the stained glass window was about a foot higher than eye level so I ...

I qualified as a stonemason last July and completed an incredibly enjoyable and memorable stonemasonry apprenticeship with The Prince's Foundation for Building Community  in which I made so many friends and worked on so many historic buildings.  During that time, I had a two-week letter carving placement with Bernard Johnson , a very talented and friendly letter carver based in Oxfordshire.  It was with him that I picked up the bug for letter carving and realised that I didn't want to do anything else.  He didn't have an apprentice opportunities at that time, but pointed me in the direction of Fergus Wessel, another letter carver in Oxfordshire.  I went to visit  Fergus at his Stonecutters workshop and after a week's trial, he was able to offer me a four-year apprenticeship.  I am both incredibly lucky to have been given the chance of being his new apprentice, not least because he himself was trained at the prestigious Ki...