The Accessing Websters Project has the promotion of traditional skills at its core. For over three decades Four Acres Charitable Trust and its sister charity have been supporting the use of traditional skills over several buildings including Lansdowne Church and Cottiers .

Approach to Training

When Stonemason Sandy Donaldson entered his apprenticeship with Hunter and Clark the training process took several years. Hunter and Clark was an old established Glasgow firm of stone masons and general builders. He spent the first six months simply washing down stonework. He then spent a substantial period working as a labourer for other tradesmen, joiners, builders, roofers before settling on a journey to becoming a fully fledged stonemason. The training included coursework at the Glasgow College of Building and Printing.  After rising to become a foreman mason he subsequently worked independently and in that capacity started undertaking projects at Cottiers in 2013 (where he had worked under Hunter and Clark in 1995) and Websters.  All of the stonework, builder work and shop fitting work at Websters since 2103 has been carried out by Sandy Donaldson.

Jo Hollamby, before gaining hands-on experience working for Sandy at Cottiers and Websters, started working for a joiner in a shop fitting business when her children were small. She then studied at Anniesland College, Glasgow and completed an HNC in furniture design and construction moving on to Glasgow College of Building and Printing where she was awarded an HND in Architectural Conservation before finally gaining a BSC(Hons) in Building Surveying from Glasgow Caledonian University.  However it was after setting up a gardening business and working at Cottiers that she started assisting Sandy Donaldson providing an opportunity to practice and extend the scope of the subjects she had studied at college.  

As the work increased they were joined by Barry Murdoch and Lewis Kelly neither of whom had prior involvement with traditional skills. Lewis has since attended courses at the Lime Centre.

Work at Cottiers and Websters has provided many opportunities for Sandy to teach the other members of the team skills in slab laying, stone pointing, cutting and indenting stone, mosaic, internal joinery, sheeting, brickwork and blockwork and other aspects of the building trades.

Compared to an apprenticeship such as the one Sandy originally undertook for a large scale contractor, a small team offers a format for close instruction and supervision under his watchful eye.