Kim Stops says being tasked with memorialising someone was a great honour. Photo / Michaela Gower
Kim Stops says being tasked with memorialising someone was a great honour. Photo / Michaela Gower
An etching into the history that makes up towns across New Zealand, the results of monumental masonry can last far longer than a lifetime.
But the masons themselves are becoming a dying breed. There are now just 150 left in New Zealand, and even fewer with thequalifications it takes to work on our national monuments.
He is a passionate advocate for monumental masonry careers, after accidentally falling into one himself when he was 15.
“You get to do and be an extraordinary part of someone’s life, even though you never actually get to meet them, you’re charged with memorialising them – we get to do something that is there forever and that’s kind of cool.”
Stops said the reason for the decline in the art form was the lack of awareness and a previous requirement of 15 years’ experience in the profession before being able to work on a national monument.
While 15 years is now just an industry recommendation, Stops said the ageing population of masons didn’t help either.
“Nobody knows who we are, and some people can go through an entire lifetime and never need us.”
Stops said when he got the job as a teenager he asked about an apprenticeship and was told there wasn’t one available.
“I didn’t understand then what that meant or what I was doing, I was just doing a job, it wasn’t until later in life that I realised how important it was.”
His boss and mentor was a leading mason in New Zealand and taught him the necessary skills and knowledge to become a monumental mason.
“The short story was he said he would teach me everything that I need to be a highly skilled monumental mason and then I could produce the qualification.”
Ten years later he did exactly that and helped write a qualification for New Zealand, which has since been revised three times.
When the qualification is completed a mason can work on anything in a cemetery, community monuments, war memorial monuments, and foundation monuments on historic and new buildings.
Kim Stops is advocating for more people to take up the monumental mason profession. Photo / Michaela Gower
Now aged 56, and with many projects under his belt, Stops has been “focused and enthusiastic about creating a qualification”.
Stops has worked on monuments around the country, including the cenotaph in Hastings and the lion monument in Cornwall Park.
“I’ve had the privilege of working on the cenotaph three times now over the last 40 years.”
He said it could be a varied and exciting career and at an estimate, a monumental mason could be paid between $32 and $45 an hour.
While people could be brought in from overseas to work on national monuments, he felt it was more fitting for a Kiwi to do it.
Now, with the help of BCITO, the national training organisation for the building and construction industry, Stops is hoping more people will seriously consider taking up the work and leaving their mark on history.
Michaela Gower joined Hawke’s Bay Today in 2023 and is based out of the Hastings newsroom. She covers Dannevirke and Hawke’s Bay news and loves sharing stories about farming and rural communities.
