British Memorial Garden

A fisherman's cottage near John o' Groats has become the base for one of Britain's most celebrated sculptors as he works on one of his most important commissions.

Simon Verity is using Scottish stone to create part of the New York memorial to the 67 British victims of the September 11 attacks.

His work already can be seen at Wells Cathedral, Exeter Cathedral and the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York City, as well as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. He also has works in the private collections of the Prince of Wales, Sir Elton John, and Lord Rothschild. Verity has a home in New York.

In March, the British Memorial Garden Trust received final approval from the City of New York and the Arts Commission for the creation of a memorial in the garden in the city's Hanover Square.

Anish Kapoor, the British artist, won the competition to create a sculpture to Unity that will anchor the park. Verity's role is to prepare a pathway of grey Caithness flagstone and a lighter sandstone from Moray.

He has the stone cut with high-powered water jets at the Norfrost refrigerator factory in Castletown, near Wick. The sandstone is then cut to fit between the flagstone ribbons and Verity engraves them with the name of a British county. Two hundred and forty stones will be used to cover 95 counties.

When they finally reach New York, the stones are to be laid to represent an outline of the British coastline.

British dependent territories such as the Virgin and South Sandwich Islands will be engraved on smaller stones cut as commas, while the shields of the 42 British societies in New York will adorn iron bollards at the end of the garden. The burghs of London will be remembered in a bench area.

The park has been designed by Julian and Isabel Bannerman, old friends of Verity. Verity said: "I have known them for 25 years. Julian's family was from Caithness. It was his idea to come up with what he called 'the poem of the counties'. It is a sweet concept. But it is the counties as they were before 1974.

"The project appealed to me. I am very interested in paving. I spent a lot of time working in Rome where there is a lot of beautiful old paving. We are all linked by what we walk on. If you were an emperor you still had people carrying you on these stones. So the wearing of the stones actually marks our passage through life, part of our story which is very moving." He is in the far north to be close to Caithness Stone Industries' source of flagstone at Spittal, and Moray Stone Cutters in Elgin.

Verity started on the edge of Wales, has worked his way round the south coast of England and has just finished Leicestershire. "Now I am on Derbyshire and when I am working on the lettering I am thinking about the beautiful houses I know there. "The likes of Hertfordshire I don't know well, but I am thinking of the Marquis of Hertford and his wonderful art collection, all these beautiful romantic paintings by Watteau and Fragonard. So I want to learn about places like Ross-shire so I can build in some feeling."

Some geographic licence is required to fit them all in. Nairn, for example, will be on the north-west coast of this map of Britain, somewhere about Gairloch.

He often goes down to sit at the harbour at Castletown where, in the nineteenth century, ships carrying the Caithness stone would leave for places such as New York. He says it adds another layer of meaning to his work.

He believes he will be finished in Caithness before Christmas, but thinks he will return to the area at some time.

He said: "I had never been north of Edinburgh, but I think this is beautiful. It is less theatrical than other parts of the Highlands, but the glaciers have shaped out these gentle shapes and rocks. And the people are marvellous."

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