March 25, 2020

Durable and attractive, Yorkstone or Yorkshire Sandstone, is a very popular choice with our clients for headstones, plaques and memorials.

Yorkstone headstone with bespoke carving

Yorkstone is a sandstone from Northeast England Yorkshire formed over 300 million years ago during the Carboniferous (coal-bearing) period. The tightly grained rock has been quarried since medieval times.

This natural stone comes in a variety of colours, ranging from deep sandy buff to grey with hints of silver or blue, depending on the minerals within its makeup and the quarries from which it is extracted.

The stone turns darker with age and weathering, and the overall appearance mellows beautifully over time as lichens grow on the stone. For this reason the stone is a very sympathetic choice for historic environments such as country churchyards.

The versatile stone is a great choice for a bespoke memorial and particularly suitable for the hand cutting of letters and the carving of intricate designs. Traditionally the inscriptions on Yorkstone memorials were not painted and most new memorials follow this understated approach.

As well as being aesthetically pleasing, Yorkstone is known for being hard wearing and is a popular stone in Sussex due to its close resemblance to our local Wealden Sandstone, which is too soft for making memorials. It gives exceptional durability against harsh weather conditions such as frost and has a proven track record of longevity and strength; for example it has been used over the years as the traditional London paving stone.

Reclaimed Yorkstone was used extensively for the paving around war memorials where Portland stone was not used. Reclaimed Yorkstone really lends itself to kerbs and ledgers as it is available in large size slabs and can also be fabricated to create crosses, die stone, boulders and many other forms of memorial.

Rotherfield War Memorial Burslem

Rotherfield War Memorial in Yorkstone

A notable example of a memorial Burslem has made using Yorkstone is the Rotherfield War Memorial, which was produced by our team to commemorate the WW1 centenary in 2018, and featured on BBC Countryfile.

For examples of Burslem’s memorials using Yorkstone see our gallery.

If you’d like to discuss designing your own memorial and the different options of stone available contact our team.

Burslem Memorials Headstone Gravestone Bespoke Kent East Sussex