Timeless, sustainable, and with understated style: Why go to Carrara when you can shop British stone?
The time for pearly white surfaces is over, let’s make room for more interesting home-grown limestones in pinks, browns and greys, says Arabella Youens
When the Country Life stand at this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show is unveiled, it will shine a spotlight on our home-grown stone. For the ‘Garden Lover’s Library’, architect George Saumarez Smith of ADAM Architecture has conceived a classically inspired domestic interior. As part of the stand, he commissioned Somerset-based English stone specialists Artorius Faber to create a fireplace carved from fossil limestone in mid-grey from Derbyshire and a geometric floor featuring hexagons of blue-black limestone from southern Ireland and triangles of grey-cream limestone from Derbyshire. Completing the stonework on display is a pair of bespoke decorative obelisks displayed on the mantelpiece. These are made from Cloam English agglomerate.
Not many visitors to the show will instantly recognise the stones. Those typically associated with this country are building stones, such as those from Portland, which were used to build large parts of Georgian London, alongside the honey-coloured stone of the Cotswolds and the sandstones of the North. Few British limestones have been embraced for interiors, although with an eye on environmental impact and a desire to use more native materials, that is changing.
Country Life's stand at RHS Chelsea in 2025 featured plenty of Artorius Faber stone, such as the floor, chimneypiece, water trough and window architraves.
Edward Smith, co-founder of the family-run firm, is just back from a trip to the southern American states of Alabama and Tennessee. The American South is a growing market for their products, he explains. It’s where homeowners are particularly interested in the idea of using British stones for their house projects.
Significantly, none of the samples that Smith was demonstrating to his American clients replicates the classic look of stones typically used in high-end interiors. That landscape has been heavily dominated by Carrara, Arabescato and Statuario marbles in the past few decades. ‘White marbles are unique to Italy and Greece and we don’t have a similar very pale or white hard-wearing replica,’ Smith explains. ‘The marble-like stones we do have in this country come in browns, greys and pinks.’
Sketch of the 'Garden Lover's Library' by George Saumarez Smith, which will be at this year's RHS Chelsea Flower Show.
Part of the somewhat limited market for British stone comes down to scale. Anyone driving north from the airport in Verona can’t fail to notice a vast tract of hillside bearing the scars of large-scale quarrying, feeding the hungry appetites for book-matched Rosso Verona, a distinctive, durable red or pink ammonitic limestone from the Lessini mountains. The Apuan Alps in the northernmost tip of Tuscany have been quarried since Roman times. There, Carrara, Arabescato and Statuario marble is cut out of the face of the quarry in large chunks.
Cloam English agglomerate will be used in the 'Garden Lover's Library'.
English stones are dug out in smaller quantities and most British quarries exist to create aggregate. Only about 10% of what gets extracted ends up cut and polished — the other 90% is typically used in construction for roads, concrete and other uses. ‘Purbeck Marble was used extensively as decorative details for churches, but never received the immense and sustained patronage that Italian marble benefited from,’ says Smith.
The family behind Artorius Faber began working in the early 1990s when the appetite for hard flooring was growing in the UK. Chinese slate and Spanish terracotta captivated the market at the time, but the company spotted a gap serving a desire for matching or tying in stones within existing country house floors, such as flagstones.
Everything they do is bespoke and the team work on anything from flooring to staircases, architraves, fireplaces, stone basins, terraces and steps. One of their landmark projects includes the Weston Tower in Westminster Abbey. Constructed in 2018 and designed by Ptolemy Dean, it is a square lift shaft encased in 16 different stone types representing all the stones found at the abbey. Others include the reclaimed stone terrace at Annabel’s, designed by Martin Brudnizki Design Studio. They also made the black-and-white paving of the terrace at recently renovated Monmouth House in London’s Hyde Park Gate based on evidence of the garden terracing designed by Edwin Lutyens for the house in 1928.
'While cheap imports of travertine, which were fashionable in the 1990s, are now being taken out, we’ve never had to replace a floor that a client has become tired of'
Artorius Faber owns a quarry on the Isle of Purbeck near Swanage in Dorset. Here, the limestone has 17 layers, each of which has a different colour and application. As the layers were created at different times with different minerals and sea animals, each one performs differently from the next. For example, some will be frost-proof, others not; some will have lots of fossils, while others will be plainer. They also buy blocks from more than 60 others located in all parts of the British Isles, including limestone from southern Ireland through to sandstone from Yorkshire and Lancashire.
Embracing British stone, rather than reaching for popular European marbles, requires a change in mindset, Smith believes. ‘British Stone has a kind of less-is-more style, it’s the classic understatement and more designers are using the hard British stones instead of white marbles due to their uniqueness.’ Rather than creating whole marble bathrooms, it’s about having a simple bath surround or a vanity top on top of an antique washstand. ‘It also has a sense of belonging, thanks to its colour texture and the fact that it’s an integral part of this landscape.’
A floor tiled in Crawford limestone from southern Ireland, interspersed with triangles of grey-cream Taddington limestone from Derbyshire.
Furthermore, natural British stone doesn’t date. ‘While cheap imports of travertine, which were fashionable in the 1990s, are now being taken out, we’ve never had to replace a floor that a client has become tired of in 36 years of owning the business. In a world hooked on speed and disposability, stone is a fixed element and, with the right care, will last forever. Clients understand this — they consider the legacy of what they are passing on.’
There are other benefits, too. Compared with marbles from further afield, the carbon footprint of British stone is light. It’s quarried, cut and polished with minimal additives and, more importantly, blocks are selected and cut for specific projects with very little wastage.
Anyone considering using British stone in a significant way, such as a floor of the type on display at the Country Life stand, needs to design it in at the earliest stages. ‘That’s why we like architects and designers to come to the workshop to see the materials and design from the ground up with that element in place from the beginning — not as an afterthought,’ says Smith. ‘A stone floor should be designed for the space; it’s part of the architecture, not a transient covering.’
To ensure someone is on hand to help, visits to the Artorius Faber showroom in Yeovil, Somerset, are by appointment only from Monday to Friday, 7am – 5pm. Contact the team on 01935 847333 or fill in a form here.
The Country Life ‘Garden Lover’s Library’, designed by George Saumarez Smith of Adam Architecture, is at stand PW215 at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, May 18–23.
