History
All originating from St Just, Cornwall, the Semmens family have a strong stonemason lineage and heritage - Starting with Jamie's great grandfather who worked at levant mine and for the council in the early 1900's breaking granite left over from the mine to use on roads, using just a hammer in those days. Some of the Semmens were also known to take part in the granite drilling competitions in the plain and quarry in St Just. Jamie's grandfather Tommy Semmens worked as a maintenance man at Geevor tin mine, and later set up a building company with Jamie's father Nigel Semmens.
Nigel and Tommy used feathers and gads to split and break granite to make into useable pieces, and although effective, this was a very time consuming process. Jamie left school and started as an apprentice with the company, his first lesson was to learn the process of working with granite, and found he enjoyed it. Nigel had collected surplus granite over the years, and had accumulated a large pile of the stone. Jamie also added to this pile, often coming across pieces 100-300 years old, which were well dressed and would have taken much skill and time to achieve.
As the demand of using traditional Cornish granite increased in the companies building projects, Jamie and Nigel found themselves having to rift through their granite pile to find the 'good' pieces, and leaving a lot go to waste, or to be used for less aesthetically important projects like hedges. The cost in labour to make the rejected pieces of granite usable for house facing would have been expensive and impractical for the company.
This inspired Jamie and Nigel to come up with a solution which would reduce the waste of the unwanted granite, the labour time it took to break the pieces down and make useable, and also free up the space in which the unusable granite often took up on small sites. So the company invested in a granite splitting machine. This allowed them to supply good quality ready to use granite, eliminated labour time, they were able to supply in bags which are both stackable and movable on site, and it allowed them to turn previously unusable granite into facing stone due to the quick pace of the machine.
Cornish Granite Supplies Ltd. is now Cornwall's number one company for granite supplies!
Nigel and Tommy used feathers and gads to split and break granite to make into useable pieces, and although effective, this was a very time consuming process. Jamie left school and started as an apprentice with the company, his first lesson was to learn the process of working with granite, and found he enjoyed it. Nigel had collected surplus granite over the years, and had accumulated a large pile of the stone. Jamie also added to this pile, often coming across pieces 100-300 years old, which were well dressed and would have taken much skill and time to achieve.
As the demand of using traditional Cornish granite increased in the companies building projects, Jamie and Nigel found themselves having to rift through their granite pile to find the 'good' pieces, and leaving a lot go to waste, or to be used for less aesthetically important projects like hedges. The cost in labour to make the rejected pieces of granite usable for house facing would have been expensive and impractical for the company.
This inspired Jamie and Nigel to come up with a solution which would reduce the waste of the unwanted granite, the labour time it took to break the pieces down and make useable, and also free up the space in which the unusable granite often took up on small sites. So the company invested in a granite splitting machine. This allowed them to supply good quality ready to use granite, eliminated labour time, they were able to supply in bags which are both stackable and movable on site, and it allowed them to turn previously unusable granite into facing stone due to the quick pace of the machine.
Cornish Granite Supplies Ltd. is now Cornwall's number one company for granite supplies!
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We look forward to hearing about your project.
We look forward to hearing about your project.