Limestone high quality quarried limestone, called Indiana limestone. Many famous buildings in London are built from Portland limestone. Limestone was also a very popular building block in the Middle Ages in the areas where it occurred, since it is hard, durable, and commonly occurs in easily accessible surface exposures. Many medieval churches and castles in Europe are made of limestone. Beer stone was a popular kind of limestone for medieval buildings in southern England. Limestone and (to a lesser extent) marble are reactive to acid solutions, making acid rain a significant problem to the preservation of artifacts made from this stone.
Robert Paterson (stonemason) Robert Paterson (stonemason) Robert Paterson (1715–1801), known as "Old Mortality", was a Scottish stonemason who took it upon himself to travel around lowland Scotland carving inscriptions for the unmarked graves of Covenanters martyred in the 17th century. Walter Scott made him a principal character in his novel "Old Mortality" (1816). Paterson was born near Hawick in 1715. Through the patronage of Sir Thomas Kirkpatrick, whose cook he had married, he obtained the lease of a quarry at Gatelawbridge, but in 1745 his house was plundered by the retreating Jacobites, and Paterson himself, a pronounced Cameronian, was carried off a prisoner.