About Us Archives ~ Architectural Paving & Stone

Behind The Scenes – Paving

Buxton Stone Admin Team — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 16:27:12 +0000

Behind the Scenes – Paving

It’s wonderful to talk about our projects that feature high profile buildings and projects; we have had the pleasure of supplying work for major UK church restorations, prestige stately homes and prime governmental structures.

However, most of our projects involve supplying large scale flagging, paving and walling for local governments. This year we have been inundated with projects supplying a lot of commercial work to ‘reflag’ our clients streets and pathways. However, projects like this take a lot of planning and work.

Our commercial work takes a lot of time to work, make and deliver. Often the project requirements are over 1000m² and each project can take upto 12-18 months to complete – depending upon circumstances. As well as regular paving, we also supply blister paving, coloured bricks, paving setts, radial and transition kerbing for a wide range of requirements.

Pictures below are examples of the paving we supply, our dedication to high quality natural stone, having a fine tunes process and ability to deliver means our large projects are a great part of what we do.

To have a look at our process of making the paving, follow the link > HERE

On average, if we supply 1000m² of paving, taking the average paving slab size and thickness; we would be supplying between 3000-4000 pieces of paving stone (depending on the size of the stone) at around 190 tonnes! That is just one job at over 1000m², we have had several running this year – it’s a lot of stone production! What can we do for you?

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Belton House Winter Lights Experience

Team Support — Fri, 15 Dec 2023 13:03:22 +0000

Winter Lights at Belton – Our Team Visit

This year we had the privilege of being a part of a restoration project at Belton House, we helped with the resurfacing of their visitor courtyard by processing nearly 9,000 granite cobble setts, all from the original cobbles, so these could achieve a flat surface area more user friendly and especially to pushchairs, wheelchairs and scooter visitors to Belton.

Because of our involvement, we were invited to one of their Winter Lights event at Belton evening displays (which runs every afternoon / evening during the ‘Christmas season’) as a Thank You from the National Trust on working on this restoration project with them.

So, one cold Friday evening after work a couple of weeks ago, our team travelled over from the Peak District to the Belton House Estate outside of Grantham in Lincolnshire to enjoy the evening and see for ourselves the success of this project and our part in this restoration work.

A few of us from our team standing on the new flat surfaced setts, now relayed after processing. Looking around the courtyard, we could see the benefits these have to visitors to the courtyard and property.

We could see some of the 9000+ setts that we reworked, laid out and looking a natural part of the courtyard.

After viewing our contribution to the refurbishment, we headed out through the gardens to enjoy the Winter Lights with our families.

During the walk you can enjoy mulled wine, marshmallows on sticks and cook them over fire pits, enjoy the displays, lights and attractions throughout the pathways finishing back in the courtyard where most enjoyed warm crepes to end a wonderful evening event.

It was a memorable experience, and we appreciate the kindness of The National Trust team and David Munslow for making this possible. We also enjoyed seeing our work being used for its intended purpose being a safe thoroughfare through and around the courtyard buildings.

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Natural Stone Pier Cap Project

Team Support — Thu, 28 Apr 2022 10:56:21 +0000

Natural Stone Gate Post Pier Caps

We were approached to supply some moulded pier caps for a pair of gate posts for a local property that had undergone a renovation and they wanted a statement piece at the property entrance to make a grand feature.

Most pier caps are around 500-800 cm square, so we are used to that size; but the requirement for these was just over 1 metre square!

Natural Stone

We made the pier caps using Stanton Moor Sandstone, these are the biggest single set of moulded pier caps we have made. After the customer picked this stunning pyramid design, we put the measurements and design into our CNC machine and then let the machine cut them out of a single larger solid piece of stone. There are 4 underside decreasing steps, each cut perfectly with the pyramid cap shaped to allow water to flow off and lend a touch of style to the caps.

Each piece weighed half a tonne. These solid, heavy pieces of natural stone will last the test of time and provide a nice smooth top to offset and contrast against the more natural stone build of the gatepost.

If you have a requirement for a natural stone feature for a property; anything from a pier cap to a window cill, from a fire place hearth to a tiles – contact us first.

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Hopton-Wood Natural Stone

Team Support — Thu, 31 Mar 2022 16:10:42 +0000

What is Hopton-Wood Stone?

Hopton-Wood Stone (some write it Hoptonwood or Hopton Wood) is a limestone that is quarried in Derbyshire, near to the market town of Middleton-by-Wirksworth.

It is classed by some as England’s finest stone due to its marble like quality and its ability to be carved (making it suitable for headstones). The popularity of Hopton-Wood Stone can be seen in the list of nationally important buildings that have had Hopton-Wood Stone in their construction. These include Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the Albert Memorial, Lichfield Cathedral, Calke Abbey, Chatsworth House and more [source Wikipedia]. There is a more detailed list HERE from Wirksworth Parish Records.

Examples of Hopton-Wood Stone

The tomb of Oscar Wilde is made out of Hopton-Wood stone, is followed by a video of the stone being collected, cut and installed in the Elizabeth Tower London (aka Big Ben).

We recently supplied Hopton-Wood stone to go into the 5 year refurbishment of the Elizabeth Tower (Big Ben); the article and video can be found HERE.

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GMM EGIL 700 CNC 5-Axis Sawing Machine

Team Support — Sun, 20 Feb 2022 10:46:33 +0000

GMM EGIL CNC STONE SAWING MACHINE

The GMM company produced a powerful CNC stone cutting machine, called the Egil. The Egil combines the easy of use you get from a traditional manual machine, with the high output operator free sawing cycles.

Easy to use programs means machine operators can get the most from the machine. It can cut from CAD, do contouring, profiling and shaping, curb programming, drilling and lettering plus spiral work pieces.

We are please to have this installed at our location in Longcliffe, Derbyshire to help us continue to expand our range of precise, fine cut and bespoke stone work – or ongoing ranges; especially items like stone balusters that need to be perfectly round and sized to match renovation work on historical properties.

What We Say

Julie from Buxton Architectural Stone

“GMM EGIL CNC is the brand of the saw CNC means it is an automated saw that can be programmed and left to do specific stone cutting without manual operation and are capable of intricate masonry cutting traditionally done by hand by masons.”

Egil 700 CNC 5-Axis Stone Sawing Machine – Features

Our new machine is:

A fully interpolated 5 axis movement with a rotating head having a 370º range, with an inclination from 0º – 90º.
Hot dipped galvanized steel non rotating table with a saw surface and allowing a maximum blade size of 825mm with a Z axis (rise and fall movement) 700mm.
The principle sections of the machine are made from solid cast with ancillary parts made up of hot dipped galvanised steel structures – supplied with folding door solid panel safety barriers.
Fast and precise movements due to brushless motors with absolute encoders, recirculating ball bearing movement, precision gearboxes and interpolated axis from the CNC.
Electro spindle running up to 6000 rpm with centre waterfeed and a 36×2 or ½ gas fitting. Or (on request) ISO40 cone fitting running at up to 8000 rpm for automatic tool change.
Suspended pendant with 15” TFT color touchscreen. Machine is equipped with USB/Ethernet port for easy loading of programs. Stainless steel electrical panel.

CNC 5-Axis Stone Sawing Machine

No matter what your challenge is with regards to Natural Stone, whether it’s new builds, cornice works, renovations, refurbishments or something else; we can do the job for you. It’s one of the reasons national distributors, project managers, stone masons or local builders come to use – for a wide range of jobs; because we have the trained staff and right machinery.

This new Egil 700 adds to our portfolio of machines; see what we can do for you, enquire within.

If you have a stone project, need stone supplied cut to very accurate sizes or supplied to be finished on site, we would be delighted to hear from you. To see our cutting processes, click here.

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