Simon Verity

Verity acquired from the Nicholson family of gin distillers the Hartham Park or Pickwick underground quarry of Bath stone, at Box Hill, near Corsham, originally opened in the 1840s, which he sold in 1989.

Simon Verity (born 1945) is a British sculptor, master stonecarver and letter cutter.

Much of his work has been garden sculpture and figure sculpture in cathedrals and major churches.

He has works in the private collections of King Charles III, Sir Elton John and Lord Rothschild.

Verity is the son of Terence Verity, an architect and art designer, and his wife Enid, née Hill, artist, designer and colour theorist.

Following his education at Marlborough College, he received his training through an informal apprenticeship to his great-uncle, Oliver Hill, at Daneway House, and under the conservationist Professor Robert Baker's teaching at Wells Cathedral.

Verity's early work includes inscriptions and small printed editions of concrete poetry in collaboration with Sylvester Houédard, produced in his studio at Daneway.

Having established his own studio at Rodbourne, St Paul Malmesbury Without, he made notable contributions of figure sculpture and fountains to local Cotswold gardens, including Barnsley House, Kiftsgate Court and Batsford Arboretum.

From the mid-1980s, Verity worked with a small team of colleagues, including Diana Reynell, Belinda Eade and his own family, on the restoration of a group of historic grottoes, including those at Marlborough Mound (1985), Painshill Park (1988-9), Goldney House (1984), Hampton Court House (1989) and Walton Hall Bath House (1987-91).

A 1988 memorial by Verity for the writer Sophie Behrens was the catalyst for the creation of Memorials by Artists, an organization dedicated to the creation of unique memorials.

Settling in the United States about 1988, Verity worked as director on the carving of the west portal of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York (also known as the Portal of Paradise) from 1988 until 1997.

At the start, Verity was assisted by six apprentices.

He has since created new grottoes at Leeds Castle (1989), and in the United States, England, Greece and Italy.

In 1993, Jean-Claude Marchionni, a master stonecarver from France, joined Verity in the project.

A procession of 32 matriarchs and patriarchs from the Old and New Testaments were carved from blocks of limestone already in place.

The Garden commemorates the 67 British victims of the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center.

The map features all the counties of Great Britain, as well as the boroughs of London and British Islands and protectorates.

The map is carved from grey flagstone from Caithness and sandstone from Moray, Scotland.

Verity has participated in a programme of artist's residencies, lectures and demonstrations in the USA.

In 2004, Verity was commissioned to design and build a hand-carved map of the United Kingdom to form the paving for the British Memorial Garden in New York's Hanover Square.

Writings include memoirs of his apprenticeship with Oliver Hill and The Library of Libraries (2013), a satirical illustrated polemic inspired by the campaign to preserve the stacks in the New York Public Library.

Late work attributed to him includes land art, notably a series of graffiti inscriptions carved on intertidal boulders on the shores of Caithness, Scotland, where he has maintained a vacation home at Stemster.

Other works include:

In January 2015, he visited Duke University for a 10-day residency during which he recreated the Head of a virtue, a 1245 sculpture from Notre-Dame Cathedral that is now in the collection of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke.