The Church Stone was researched, designed, carved and polished by one person taking approximately two thousand hours to acheive. A great deal of time was taken at each stage of experimentation, refinement and evaluation of the design before embarking on the single handed removal of an estimated six thousand kilograms of granite.
The physical evidence of history in Basingstoke in recent decades had largely become invisible because of developments in other areas including it's transportation systems and road networks and so one contribution that could be made was to return some sense of "place" to the sculpture site. The Church Stone is not plynthed; it stands almost three metres high and the main element is a single block of hand carved and polished silver grey granite with a precarved weight of over thirteen tonnes. Inset into the ground and with four inset granite panels surrounding it; it gives the appearance of growing though the street bricks - an ancient material in a new context.
This sculpture makes reference to a lost church; to nearby Roman Silchester (amphorae/pottery forms); to Stonehenge (and menhir in general) and to the ontology of the material from which it is made.
It was not designed to report on "facts" in history (that had been already done) but to be physically phenomenal and be evocative of that which we need from time to time - a place of introspection and silence. It is fitting that there was once on the same site, among the commercial bustle of a shopping centre, a place of such calm - St.Emmanuels Church, and that now there exists a work of contemporary sculpture in sympathy with that need.
