Angell

I soon have to put up my fishing umbrella and I draw this with a patter of rain and a murmur from the motorway in the background. Rain brings the deep carving of this fine-grained sandstone memorial to life. The carved fruits glisten like ripe black grapes.

I like the deep carving: I imagine the mason carving the basic rounded massses then dividing them up into leaves and fruits. The chisel marks are still crisp and fresh and mimic the fine texture of smaller veins across the leaves.

A local man who served in World War I once told me that as a boy he'd wanted to go into art. He drew portraits of his comrades in the trenches to send back to their wives and girlfriends at home. After leaving school he had two choices if he wished to work in art: monumental mason or painter and decorator.

He knew masons suffered from the effects of breathing in the dust so he became a painter and decorator.

When I finish the drawing I move around to the front of the headstone and find that it was erected in memory of Jane, wife of the Reverend Charles Henry Angell. She died on the 16th May 1870, aged 57.