This potentially dangerous monument was taken down in 2003.

Please exercise caution in Woodlawn Cemetery. Every year, we make continued progress in making the monuments safe: but please use common-sense and do not push, lean on, or climb the monuments.


Monument Safety
1 Introduction
2 Safety Repairs
3 Annual Safety Survey
4 Sample Safety Repair



1 Introduction to Monument Safety at Woodlawn Cemetery

The safety of monuments is perhaps the most serious long-term issue facing Woodlawn Cemetery. The first modern attempts to begin comprehensive safety maintenance took place in 1973 and 1974. Cemetery-wide projects in those years attempted to address years of natural damage: due to weathering, ground settling, rusting pins, and foundations subsiding. Repair were completed to the best practices of the time: unfortunately, some of these techniques have been found to be ineffective, and, in some cases (such as the removal and destruction of broken limestone bases), the jobs were actually more damaging than beneficial.

In 1995, Paul Taylor, the General Manager, started work on a long-term goal to repair all the monuments of Woodlawn, and to establish Woodlawn as a safe place and a guiding example of proper historic conservation. Despite eight years of accelerating progress, we still have a long way to go, and significant obstacles to overcome. We have succeeded in making safe over 3000 monuments, including the 100 most dangerous in the cemetery, but we still have approximately 1500 to repair-- and many of these are delicate historic tombstones requiring difficult and complex conservation techniques.

A well-established Care & Maintenance Fund started in 1914 supports general grounds maintenance, but the funding for monument work was only initiated in 1991. As only the interest is available for on-going work (with the principal retained for future interest generation), current funding levels are not even sufficient for yearly monument maintenance. Continuing progress thus depends upon the will of management, the determination of the cemetery staff, and the help of the public. Your encouragement and support has helped us get this far: we hope to be able to complete this wonderful project, and preserve the monumental history of the community entrusted to us.


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2 Safety Repairs

Woodlawn is nearing the final push of a long-term project to complete safety repairs to all high priority monuments-- with ~4500 repairs targetted. We have succeeded in completing repairs to over 3000 monuments.
The 100 most dangerous monuments have all been made safe, as have most of the ~400 Safety/Priority Class 2 monuments [the classification system is described in section 3: Annual Safety Survey, below].

Although only ~1400 more monuments require repair, this total includes many of the most complex and time-consuming jobs. As Woodlawn Cemetery is committed to respecting and preserving the past, we attempt to make sure that all of our repairs are as conservation-friendly as possible. In addition, given the problems with some of earlier repair techniques, we are attempting to ensure that our repairs are as long-lasting as possible. This too requires extra work, planning, and skills.

Actual repairs range from quick 'putty' jobs with monument sealing compound, to complex repairs involving pinning and full foundations. In some cases, monuments are left dis-assembled for periods while the repairs are taking place. We attempt to ensure that monuments or areas are marked out with signs, but this is not always possible. Please be assured that we are making significant progress in completing our ambitious repair plans-- we will get to each job eventually.



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3 Annual Safety Survey

Every year, Woodlawn Cemetery conducts a full safety survey of all monuments. Each monument is assessed for its possible dangerousness, and physically tested if necessary.

This programme was started in 1998, with the goal of prioritizing the 25 or so most dangerous monuments in the cemetery. What was found, instead, that the state of monuments was worse than had been supposed: 6 monuments were taken down immediately (being so dangerous that they had to be made safe right away), and 90 other monuments were identified as being significant hazards: with action to be taken by the end of the year: these were designated Safety/Priority 1 monuments.

As the Annual Safety Survey has progressed, we have established a categorization system ranking monuments from Class 1 to 6. Although we have not yet succeeded in categorizing every monument individually, our progress in completing repairs is rapidly decreasing the number of monuments which must be monitored every year. The assessing and categorizing have helped our planning for continuing repair projects: allowing us to target the highest priority areas and stones.

All of the 96 monuments initially designated as being Safety/Priority Class 1 have been made safe. In most cases, immediate on-site repairs were not possible or feasible, so the dangerous parts of the monuments were dis-assembled and taken into storage. The re-installation of these monuments has been established as one of the key priorities of the Five Year Plan for Monuments with a goal of at least three of the stored monuments completely repaired every year. This re-installation work has progressed much faster than planned, both as a result of the increasing skills and experience of Woodlawn staff and as a result of the continuing support of the General Manager. The only monuments which are still at or beyond the limits of our in-house skills are polished round granite obelisk spires, and monuments over 10' tall.

The Care & Maintenance Fund for Monuments, established in 1991, currently provides only a modest portion of the monies required for proactive monument safety work, let alone conservation work to preserve the historic monuments of Woodlawn. A number of helpful and generous donations to the Care & Maintenance Fund for Monuments have helped with the growth of the fund, and have energized the continuing work. Thank you to all our past donors!

There are currently ~1500 monuments identified as requiring maintenance or repair. These range from Safety/Priority Class 2 monuments (which require attention as soon as possible) to S/P Class 4 monuments (which are quite stable, but whose condition could be improved with maintenance or conservation work).

In order to ensure that future generations are not burdened and endangered by unsafe monuments, we are establishing improved standards for new monuments. Our first step in this direction was the specification that tablets be a minimum of 8" thick. This vastly increases the stability of the monument relative to the pre-1990 standards of a minimum 6" thickness. The long-term goal of our improved standards will be to ensure that no new monuments will ever be likely to become dangerous.

If you see one of our staff trying to push over monuments, please be assured: we are just testing the monument and trying to make Woodlawn Cemetery as safe as possible, for you.


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4 Sample Safety Repair

This monument dates from the 1880s and commemorates one of the earliest families in Guelph, descendants and relations to one of the La Guayran settlers (an aborted attempt to establish Scotland as a colonial power).

The monument is a very tall orange granite obelisk with highly polished sides and a square design, sitting on a limestone plinth and a carved limestone base. By 1998, the monument had begun to lean very seriously, such that the loose 400kg spire could be pushed over. The monument was identified as being Safety/Priority Class 1. The spire was taken down and removed to storage in the fall of 1998.
Photo: Granite Obelisk 1: Dangerous Lean shows the monument before the spire was taken down for safe storage.
Photo: Granite Obelisk 2: Spire Stored presents the monument as it appeared from 1998 through 2002.

Restoration work began with the complete dis-assembly of the monument to allow access to the ground beneath the base. Excavation revealed that the original foundation was a 1 metre deep hole filled with limestone chunks. These chunks had shifted and the front side has subsided: likely due to a combination of frost heaving and ground sinkage from old interment sites. Once the monument had started to lean, the differential effect of gravity probably accelerated the sinkage on the front side. A full modern foundation of high quality concrete was installed in a formed excavation 1.25 metres deep (and 1m length x 1m width). Monies for the foundation were provided by the Care & Maintenance Fund for Monuments.
Photo: Granite Obelisk 3: Monument Dis-assembled shows the new foundation, with the monument sections arrayed around the site.

The base was re-installed on the site on the new foundation. Large granite chunks were used to level the rough and uneven bottom of the base, such that the rest of the monument will be perfectly level. These granite chunks were then mortared in place, to ensure that they are not vulnerable to future movement. The foundation had been poured specifically to be 5cm below ground level such that the final installation of the base matches the ground level exactly at the highest side. In keeping with the conservation values of Woodlawn Cemetery, the base was not set into the wet concrete of the foundation. This will allow the base and foundation to be separated without significant damage, if future work is ever required, meeting the conservation requirement of reversibility.
Photo: Granite Obelisk 4 shows the new long-term foundation.

Each successive stage of the monument was then cleaned off and re-installed, with the spire being returned from storage. The granite layers were stabilized with the industry-standard Monument Setting Compound, but much more extensive work was completed on the limestone joints. These were sealed with a gauged lime putty mortar: a wonderful and effective technique for stonework... as practiced by the Romans, and maintained through mediaeval church and castles, and for pretty much all building until replaced in the early 1900s by Portland Cement. (The continuing catastrophic failures of Portland Cement mortars, and many other 'modern' building materials, has led to a revival in lime-based stonemasonry, as evidenced by a number of organizations listed on our Links page. See the Historic Conservation sections of this site for further information.

Lime putty mortar requires greater skill in prepartion, application, and especially in aftercare-- as evidenced by the following photos of the monument during the curing process. The lime mortar allows water movement between the limestone stages, and allows the monument and joint to breathe and water to evaporate, while preventing rain-water penetration in the joint. In the long term, the lime mortar will act as a sacrificial substance... natural weathering will concentrate in the mortar and not in the stone. In 50 years, the lime mortar will need to be replaced, but the stone will have been protected from damage.
Photo: Granite Obelisk 5: Mortar Aftercare documents the monument with lime mortar joints wrapped to protect from overly fast drying. The burlap was kept damp to encourage the proper carbonation setting of the lime putty mortar.

Photo: Granite Obelisk 6: Repair Completed, and Photo: Granite Obelisk 7: Success show the monument made safe and restored in a conservation-friendly manner.