Let’s kick off the 2023 field season with a little report of a project we worked on the previous two seasons! Over the last two field seasons (2021 & 2022), we were invited out to the community of Coley’s Point, near Bay Roberts in Conception Bay, to do work on a series of gravestones at the St. John the Evangelist Cemetery. For this project, we were contacted by the church’s board who was looking for restoration work done on about 15 gravestones. We carried out the work over three different phases in groups of five, in order to work with the schedule and budget of out clients.
This project provided some interested cases in home repairs and adhesive choices, just wait til you see! In this post, we’ll highlight a few of the stones we worked on for this project.
The majority of the gravestones at this site were made of marble, although there were some amazing examples of wood markers which show remarkable preservation. We highly recommend a visit if you’re in the area! The stunning wood church that the churchyard surrounds began construction in 1898, which took just over three years to complete, and was consecrated in 1906. Prior to the current structure, the first church in Coley’s Point stood on the site from 1854 until it was torn down for the current church’s construction.
Above is one of the graves we restored while working in the churchyard. This stone, remembering Harry Bernard Russell who was accidentally killed at Grand Falls in 1937. There is some remnants of a blue adhesive from a previous repair attempt on the gravestone, and while we got as much off as possible, you can still see it on the surface. Unfortunately, trying to remove more would have damaged the surface of the stone! Harry’s epitaph reads:
“While working in the Grand Falls Mill,
Twas poisonous acid caused his Death,
His body now lies cold and still,
Him for the last on Earth we’ve met.
–
Now to his Memory we erect,
This stone with sadness and respect,
His body lies beneath this sod,
His soul has gone to meet it’s God.”
We reset the base of this gravestone on a bed of levelled and tamped crusher dust, to provide support as well as drainage for the monument, and repaired the break using Rive50 stone epoxy, filling in the cracks after it has set with lime mortar from Limeworks. We cleaned the surface of the stone with a mixture of water and D/2, like we do for all the gravestones we work on. It looks great!
Above is another one of the stones we repaired, with three breaks that required repair, and a few larger areas of loss that we infilled with lime mortar. In the last photo you can see the beige mortar, which dried to white but we didn’t get a photo of that stage! The lovely marker, dedicated to Susannah Dawe, 1948, has curled filigree at the top and a flying dove holding a ribbon that reads ‘peace’.
You can see some remnants of white paint on the face of this gravestone, which we were unable to fully remove. Unfortunately, there is not safe way to remove paint from historic stonework that isn’t also harmful to the stone itself, so we will have to hope it peels off in the future. As we’ve talked about before in many cases, painting a gravestone, especially completely covering it with paint, will cause moisture to become trapped inside and the stone will break down faster. It does not help the preservation at all.
Finally, for this snapshot of our work at Coley’s Point, let’s take a look at this cute little stone, dedicated to Emily French, who died in 1899 at the age of 19. Because the epitaph is slightly cut off by the base, we suspect that it broke in the past and was reset into a new base with a piece missing. We reset the base to level with tamped crusher dust, cleaned both pieces with water and D/2, using soft, natural-bristle brushes, and repaired the break using the same stone epoxy as we use for all stones. This stone was painted at some point in the past but most of it has thankfully flaked off, and the break refit really cleanly!
We’re so pleased with the work we were able to do at Coley’s Point to help preserve their historic gravestones, some of which had been damaged by fallen trees in recent years. Everyone on the church board was so lovely to work with, and we can’t wait to visit again in the future!
Black Cat Cemetery Preservation 