We were fortunate enough to be able to persuade a very experienced stone carver and mason, Colin Alleyne, to demonstrate, and guide our stonework training days, that were held in a former slave hospital within the grounds of Grantley Adams Memorial School.

Tutors and students from the Samuel Jackman Prescod Institute of Technology, the Barbados Vocational Training Board, and the museum maintenance team, worked with Mark Womersley and Colin over three days, cutting, with hand saws, shaping with hatchets and double headed hammers and finishing with rasps, to build a coral stone wall and arch. With children from the school building the timber formwork.

M Womersleys on behalf of the Queen Elizabeth II, Platinum Jubilee Commonwealth Heritage Skills Training Programme, funded by the Hamish Ogston Foundation, is delivering the programme here in Barbados.