Obituary | How to mend a cathedral

Simon Verity believed in working the medieval way

The stonemason and grotto-builder died on August 11th, aged 79

Simon Verity works on a statue on the western facade of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Upper Manhattan, New York, on June 24th 1997
Photograph: G. Paul Burnett/New York Times/Redux/Eyevine

The first thing you noticed about Simon Verity was his hair. It stuck out in wild grey corkscrews, as if sprayed with the fiercest sort of gel. That grey was not a sign of age, or only partly. It was mostly stone-dust, accumulated until he could never wash it out. That same dust covered the rest of his comfortably trampish clothes. When he walked down the street, he liked to think, he looked like an apparition.

This article appeared in the Obituary section of the print edition under the headline “Simon Verity ”

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