The Rustington War Memorial

Not every restoration job ends the same way. Sometimes a memorial can be cleaned, repointed and sent on its way for another few decades. Sometimes, as with the war memorial on The Street in Rustington, West Sussex, the only honest answer is to start again from the ground up.

This project came to War Memorial Conservation Co. – our specialist sister company within the MS-Group family – via Rustington Parish Council. The brief was as simple to state as it was demanding to deliver: reproduce the memorial exactly, down to the letter and the leaf, so the village lost nothing of what it had stood looking at for a hundred years.

ABOVE: Watch the full restoration video.

What Had Gone Wrong

A site inspection carried out in July 2025 confirmed what years of West Sussex weather had been doing quietly in the background. Moss, algae and lichen had taken hold across the stone’s surface, helped along by the hedging and shrubs planted close by, while airborne pollutants and passing traffic had left their own layer of grime behind.

The bigger concern sat lower down. Along the base of each stone block, the surface had visibly eroded – a classic sign of moisture getting trapped inside the stone rather than escaping it, often because the original mortar wasn’t breathable enough to let it out. Left unaddressed, that trapped water slowly destroys the stone from within.

Once the extent of that damage was clear, repair was no longer realistically on the table. Giving Rustington a memorial that would comfortably outlast another century meant rebuilding it, not patching it.

BELOW: The extent of deterioation to the memorial saw repairing unviable.

Rebuilding in Portland Stone

Using detailed measurements and photographs taken from the existing memorial, the team at War Memorial Conservation Co. carved a full replica in Portland stone – the same stone specified in the original build, and the material behind the vast majority of Britain’s war memorials.

CNC cutting technology handled the heavy lifting on accuracy, reproducing the memorial’s proportions and moulding profiles to the millimetre. But a memorial isn’t just its measurements. The inscription was hand-cut in its entirety, V-profiled and finished in black enamel to echo the original lettering, and the wreath was hand-carved to match the depth and character of the piece it was replacing.

BELOW: 3D models were created using detailed reference diagrams to prepare the Portland stone blocks for CNC cutting.

BELOW: The CNC machine cut the four Portland blocks with intricate precision.

BELOW: The memorial body block surfaces were finished by hand.

BELOW: A new precision-cut base was also created as part of the new memorial.

Cut and Carved by Hand

On a war memorial, the words carry the weight. Here, they read:

“TO THE GLORY OF GOD AND IN HONOURED AND GRATEFUL MEMORY OF THE PEOPLE OF RUSTINGTON WHO FELL IN THE WARS”

Every letter was cut directly into the stone’s face using a V-shaped groove, laid out to mirror the size and spacing of the original as closely as possible. The only intentional change was the typeface itself: rather than reproduce the small irregularities of hand-cut 1920s lettering, the inscription was set out using a clean, computer-drawn font before cutting began – sharper to read, while still true to the memorial’s character.

Cutting a V-groove by hand leaves no room for a second attempt. Both angled faces of every stroke have to be right, or the letter catches the light wrong from every direction except the one it was cut for. Once the lettering was finished, black enamel was worked into each groove by hand, letter by letter, so the inscription would still read clearly decades from now.

The wreath began as a plain ring, roughed out from solid Portland stone by the CNC cutter – precise in outline, but without any surface detail yet. From that point on, it was down to hand craftsmanship entirely. Before any carving began, the leaf pattern was drawn straight onto the stone by hand, taken from photographs and reference material of the original wreath, so each leaf and overlap would land in the right place. An angle grinder removed the bulk of the waste stone first, roughing in the depth of the relief around the pencil lines.

As the detail increased, so did the precision of the tools – grinders gave way to hand chisels and a mallet, shaping each leaf and fold by eye rather than to a fixed measurement. It’s unforgiving work: stone removed in error can’t be put back. That same risk, though, is what gives a hand-carved wreath its character – no two leaves quite matching, just as they didn’t on the original, because they were never intended to look machine-made.

Sanded smooth and set into the memorial’s face, the finished wreath carries the same handmade quality the people of Rustington would have seen when the memorial was first unveiled – achieved through carving, not scanning.

BELOW: The finished wreath finished the memorial when fitted.

BELOW: Preparation for careful transport to West Sussex.

Taking Down the Old, Putting Up the New

Removing the original memorial came before any of the new stone could go up, and it was done with the same care the project demanded throughout. Protective barriers went up around the memorial garden, and a small mobile spider crane lifted the old structure away section by section for respectful disposal.

The replacement memorial was then built up on the original foundations, each stone section pinned with stainless steel dowels and set in lime-based mortar – a breathable alternative directly informed by what the original inspection had flagged as the root cause of the damage. Joints were kept to 5mm or under, pointed in lime mortar, and cleaned down with water once complete.

The final lift, again handled by spider crane, let the fixing crew work with precision inside the tight, well-planted memorial garden – not much room for error, and none was needed.

Back Where It Belongs

Rustington’s war memorial exists to honour the people the village lost in two world wars. The job here was never to build something new for its own sake – it was to make sure that act of remembrance continues, carved with the same permanence the original stonemasons intended when they first raised it.

We’re proud that our sister company, War Memorial Conservation Co., was entrusted with this restoration on behalf of Rustington Parish Council – and prouder still to see the memorial standing again, exactly where generations of the village have always known it to be.

Recreating the Rustington War Memorial:

A Story of Craftsmanship and Care

There are some jobs where getting it “close enough” simply isn’t good enough. The Rustington War Memorial, on The Street in West Sussex, was one of them.

Commissioned by Rustington Parish Council, this project asked our stonemasons to do something we take very seriously: give a community back its memorial, stone for stone, letter for letter, exactly as those who built it in the last century intended.

ABOVE: Watch the full restoration video.

A Memorial That Had Given All It Could

Our site inspection in July 2025 told a familiar but difficult story. The memorial’s surface was finely encrusted with biological growth – moss, algae and lichen – encouraged by the shrubs and hedging that surround it, alongside a build-up of carbon deposits from general air pollution and the passing traffic on the nearby road.

More seriously, there were clear signs of surface erosion, most pronounced at the base of each stone block. This pattern is typical of trapped moisture – often the result of an incompatible mortar that doesn’t allow the stone to “breathe” and release the water it absorbs. Over time, that trapped moisture does what water always does to stone: it breaks it down from the inside.

By the time our team returned to site, the deterioration had gone beyond what conservation and repair could fix. The only way to give Rustington a memorial fit for the next century was to recreate it.

BELOW: The extent of deterioation to the memorial saw repairing unviable.

Precision from the Ground Up

Working from careful measurements and photographs of the original, our stonemasons carved a complete replica in Portland stone – the same material used in the original memorial, and in war memorials the length and breadth of the country.

Modern CNC cutting machinery gave us the accuracy to match the memorial’s proportions and mouldings precisely, but the details that make a memorial feel right still come from hand skill. Our carvers hand-cut the entire inscription, V-cut and finished with black enamel to match the original lettering style, and hand-carved the wreath – one of the most demanding and rewarding pieces of detail on the whole memorial – to the same depth and character as the piece it replaces.

BELOW: 3D models were created using detailed reference diagrams to prepare the Portland stone blocks for CNC cutting.

BELOW: The CNC machine cut the four Portland blocks with intricate precision.

BELOW: The memorial body block surfaces were finished by hand. 

BELOW: A new precision-cut base was also created as part of the new memorial.

Where the Machine Stops and the Hand Begins

Words matter on a war memorial. The inscription is the whole point of the stone:

“TO THE GLORY OF GOD AND IN HONOURED AND GRATEFUL MEMORY OF THE PEOPLE OF RUSTINGTON WHO FELL IN THE WARS”

Each letter was V-cut directly into the face of the new Portland stone, set out to match the size, spacing and character of the original inscription as closely as possible. The one deliberate departure from the original: rather than replicate the small hand-cut inconsistencies of the 1920s lettering, our stonemasons set the inscription out with a true, even computer-drawn font before cutting – the memorial gains the crisp, legible lettering it was always meant to have, without losing anything of its character.

The cutting itself is unforgiving work. A V-cut groove is carved by hand at a precise angle on both sides of every letter stroke, so the light catches the incision and throws each word into sharp relief – miss the angle and the letter looks wrong from every direction but the one you cut it from. Once the lettering was finished, each groove was carefully filled with black enamel, painted in by hand letter by letter, stroke by stroke, to bring the inscription forward from the stone and make sure it reads as clearly in fifty years’ time as it does today.

The wreath started life as a rough ring, milled from a solid block of Portland stone by our CNC cutter – accurate to the millimetre for size and outer profile, but flat and featureless. From there, it was over to the stonemasons.

Before a single tool touched the stone, the leaf pattern was marked out by hand, pencilled directly onto the surface from the original design references, so every leaf, overlap and binding knot would sit exactly where its 1940s counterpart did. Only then did the carving begin – first with an angle grinder to remove the bulk of the waste stone and rough in the depth of the relief, working carefully around the pencil lines in clouds of stone dust.

The finer the work got, the more the tools changed. Grinders gave way to hand chisels and a mallet, cutting each individual leaf, vein and fold by eye and feel rather than by measurement. It’s a slow, deliberate process – take off too much stone in the wrong place and there’s no putting it back – but it’s exactly that risk that gives a hand-carved wreath its life. No two leaves are quite identical, the same way they weren’t on the original memorial, because they were never meant to be machine-perfect. They were meant to be carved by someone who cared about getting it right.

The finished wreath, sanded smooth and ready to be set into the memorial’s face, carries that same quiet detail the people of Rustington would have seen on the day it was first unveiled – recreated not by scanning and printing, but by a stonemason’s hands doing what CNC machinery still can’t.

The cutting itself is unforgiving work. A V-cut groove is carved by hand at a precise angle on both sides of every letter stroke, so the light catches the incision and throws each word into sharp relief – miss the angle and the letter looks wrong from every direction but the one you cut it from. Once the lettering was finished, each groove was carefully filled with black enamel, painted in by hand letter by letter, stroke by stroke, to bring the inscription forward from the stone and make sure it reads as clearly in fifty years’ time as it does today.

BELOW: The finished wreath finished the memorial when fitted.

BELOW: Preparation for careful transport to West Sussex.

A Respectful Removal, and a Careful Return

Before a single new block could go up, the old memorial had to come down – and it had to come down with dignity. Our team set out protective barriers around the memorial garden and used a small mobile spider crane to dismantle the existing structure section by section, removing it from site for respectful disposal.

The new memorial was then built up on the original foundations, each section fitted with stainless steel dowels and bedded in a lime-based mortar – the breathable material the original inspection identified as key to preventing the same deterioration happening again. Joints were kept to no more than 5mm, pointed in lime mortar, and washed down with clean water on completion.

The final lift and fit was carried out by our experienced fixing crew using a modern spider crane, chosen specifically for its ability to work with precision in the tight, planted confines of a village memorial garden.

Standing Again, for the Next Hundred Years

The people of Rustington gathered their memorial to honour those who fell in two world wars. Our job was never to make something new – it was to make sure that act of remembrance endures, carved with the same care and permanence as the original stonemasons intended in the first place.

War Memorial Conservation Co. is proud to have carried out this work for Rustington Parish Council, and prouder still that the memorial is now back where it belongs.