MONUMENTAL masons Arthur J Virgo spent nearly 80 years on the same Hereford site – until its new bosses said nothing is set in stone.

This week, the long established specialist family firm is settling into its new home at Rotherwas.

Dawn Taylor, who now runs the firm with her brother Tony, said the death of their dad JimWhiting in July last year made a break with the past seem the right thing to do.

A break, says Dawn, that both had been looking to make given the increasing limitations presented by the firm’s base of some 80 years in Kyrle Street, Hereford.

So the decision was taken to move out to Rotherwas and a site at Ravenswood Court.

The past has a particular hold on Arthur J Virgo, which can trace its roots to 1840 as a ‘start up’ in Ewyas Harold.

Hereford’s Church Street was the firm’s next home, before it settled at Kyrle Street in 1936.

A highly specialist skill, monumental masonry now competes with an increasing trend for cremation and other alternatives to traditional burial.

But headstones are made to last and business keeping them in shape is still brisk, says Dawn, though parish authorities are now much stricter on what headstones can look like, which impacts on the extent of work that can be done by the company.

Hundreds of headstones across the county have had the Virgo touch, many of them worked on by Michael Mussell, who’s been with the firm for 40 years, having first arrived on work experience.

And Michael will be taking all of his experience to Rotherwas too.