A monumental achievement: Wick company's 200-year story is set in stone
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Wick’s oldest continuously running business can truly be said to have carved its name into the history of the town.
As it marks its 200th anniversary, John Hood & Son can look back on a proud record of craftsmanship and service. It has supplied headstones to generations of local families as well as erecting, cleaning and restoring public memorials across the far north.
The firm of monumental sculptors began life when Thomas Telford’s Pulteneytown was still taking shape, with plans in hand to extend the harbour. The first stagecoach journey from Inverness to Wick and Thurso had been completed the previous summer, taking well over 24 hours, although it would still be more than half a century before the railway would reach Caithness.
In the wider Highlands, the Clearances were gathering pace. Far away in London, George IV had just ascended to the throne. Hood's is an institution that has continued not just through two world wars but also the Boer War and Crimean War – and it is still going strong as it enters its third century.
The business was founded in 1820 (the exact month is not known) by Alexander Hood, who had come to Caithness from Cromarty. Unfortunately there is no photographic record of its early days – because photography had yet to be invented.
Hood's first yard is thought to have been in Union Street, close to where Mackays Hotel is now. From there it moved to new premises near the riverside fountain before relocating in 1871 to its present site in Station Road. At that time the rail line was being extended northwards, finally coming to Wick in 1874. A short section of track would curve round from the station directly to Hood's yard to facilitate the transport of stone.
The firm had a site in Rogart and leased a sandstone quarry on the Orkney island of Eday. Hood's growth across the north also saw operations being established at Golspie, Dingwall and Stornoway, although now the only branch outside Wick is the one in Thurso.
Many of the public memorials in Wick were designed and put up by Hood's staff, including three in close proximity to the Station Road yard: the statues of Dr John Alexander and James T Calder and the Distinguished Visitors plaque.
In the aftermath of the Great War, John Hood & Son met the demand for war memorials in Caithness, Sutherland, Ross-shire and Lewis, using a fishing smack for some of the more far-flung deliveries. The company was already over a century old when it erected the war memorial in Wick.
From Aberdeenshire granite to Italian marble, stone came from many sources to be worked on.
In the 1980s the Hood family connection ended with the retiral of Alexander Hood, who had served as Captain of the 1st Wick Company Boys' Brigade for almost 30 years. However, a family link of a different kind has endured as Mar Gordon, who runs the office, is the daughter of the late Ian Christie, who was a partner in the business for many years.
The present team of six includes a trio who between them have clocked up 140 years of service.
Mar (65) started at Hood's at the age of 15, supposedly just for the summer holidays, and has worked there ever since apart from an eight-year break for family reasons.
Willie Wydmuch (63) has been there for 46 years. “I only came for a fortnight," he said. "But I didn’t get into Dounreay, so I’m still here!”
Gordon Fraser (68) goes back even further, having joined the company in 1968. He looks after the Thurso end of the business.
Willie and Gordon are directors, along with Gavin Nicolson and his son Steven. Mar is in charge of office duties along with Alison Miller.
“There have been a few other companies on the go since we started up but they’ve fallen by the wayside,” Willie explained. With a nod towards Mar, he added: “Her father told me that if you’re going to do it, do it right.”
Changes over the years have included the sizes of memorials and where stones are sourced, with most now coming from India. The business has adapted to technological progress, with many enquiries and orders now coming online, but the small office has a reassuringly traditional feel to it and Mar still refers to paper documents from as far back as the late 1940s.
“Everything is kept on computers now but we still keep a paper record. It’s quicker than a computer sometimes,” Willie said. “We get clients from all over the world."
Methods of inscribing stone have evolved too, while images reflecting an important aspect of a person's life – from pets to fishing boats to tractors – can be created with pinpoint accuracy on a laser machine.
“New stones are sandblasted, which you can do in a third of the time of hand-cut, although we still do hand-cut as well,” Willie said. “In the cemetery when you’re adding a name to an older stone that has been hand-cut with a hammer and chisel, we still do it by hammer and chisel and we’re about the only company that does that now. It just matches, and makes the whole stone look as one – whereas if you put sandblasted letters beside hand-carved it’s like chalk and cheese.”
After both wars, lead was more widely used in memorials as gold leaf had become too expensive.
Restoration work has been carried out on public memorials throughout Caithness and Sutherland, some more accessible than others. The Duke of Kent statue at remote Eagle’s Rock has been cleaned two or three times, with missing letters replaced. For some jobs it has been necessary to cross bodies of water – such as renovating Stroma's war memorial or erecting a cross on a small island in Loch Brora, an assignment that meant hiring a creel boat from Lybster and having it transported to the site by lorry.
Willie recalled how a mishap befell Ian Christie on that Loch Brora trip. “We got Edward Mackay with a digger to dig a channel to get the boat in," he said. "Mar's dad was saying ‘watch you don’t fall in’, and next thing he disappears. I looked over and all you could see was this trilby floating on the water. He got out saying ‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ then he went to walk and he fell in a heap because his waders were full of water."
On another occasion, staff from Hood's found themselves caught up in a brief public expression of contempt for the Duke of Sutherland after they were asked to move a large marble statue of the controversial landowner from Dornoch Cathedral to Dunrobin Castle. Willie said: "We were taking it out and we could hear people saying, ‘Good riddance to him, hooray!’"
In a major operation closer to home, an entire row of war graves at Wick cemetery had to be taken down so that new foundations could be installed before the stones were re-erected.
No matter the task, the quality of the finished product is as important now as it was in 1820. And so too is the sense of job satisfaction, as Willie pointed out: “It’s good when you start with a stone from scratch and two days later you’ve got a monument sitting there, not just a stone. It means something.”
