Vandals broke a town’s Scrooge gravestone. Masons repaired it free.
In “A Christmas Carol,” the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge the death of a man unmourned by his community - a man Scrooge learns is himself when he wipes snow from a gravestone, revealing his own name.
Shaken by what he saw, the once-heartless Scrooge vows to change his ways, pledging to be more charitable and to honor the selfless spirit of the holiday.
More than 180 years after Charles Dickens published the Christmas classic, stonemasons of Shrewsbury, England, put its lessons into practice - repairing free the recently vandalized Scrooge gravestone placed in a churchyard there during the making of the 1984 film adaptation of the novella.
The gravestone was broken into pieces weeks before Christmas - destroying a popular holiday tourist attraction. As the town council rushed to arrange repairs, a masonry shop generously stepped in. Scrooge’s gravestone was put back into its place last Friday.
“It was a fairly easy decision to rectify a ‘Bah humbug’ act, so to speak, with an act of goodwill, especially at this time of the year,” said Alan Cope, the director of Midland Masonry, which did the repairs.
As of Thursday, it was unclear how or why the gravestone was vandalized. Police said they had not made any arrests.
Cope, 59, remembers the buzz between neighbors when production crews for “A Christmas Carol” came to town 40 years ago. He was a teenager during its filming, and he knew the movie had been a feather in Shrewsbury’s cap for decades.
“Shrewsbury doesn’t have a lot of things to be famous about, but this is one of those things,” he said.
Cope didn’t realize the movie prop was still on the grounds of St. Chad’s Church until he got a call from a town council staff member saying it had been vandalized and asking for a quote for repairs.
In a Nov. 25 statement, the West Mercia police said the gravestone probably had been vandalized over the previous three days. Police asked for the public’s help, asking witnesses in the area to call with any information. Photos showed the gravestone had been halved and chipped at its top.
When Cope got the call about the gravestone, he happened to already have stonemasons on a job near the church. After they saw the stone, Cope called the council staffer back and said they would take the job.
And, he added, they would do it free.
“We just thought maybe this time we could do it in the spirit of the film,” Cope said.
In the days that followed, two of Cope’s stonemasons who live in Shrewsbury worked on a new concrete base for the stone at the church, giving it a more solid foundation.
Then, Cope said, they put the stone “back together like a jigsaw.” They filled the cracks with mortar and fit them back together before placing the gravestone back in its place at the church on Friday.
Once the repairs are fully cured, the stonemasons will go back - probably early next week - to tone down the fixes, making the gravesite look aged and historic once more.
Jayne McGrath, who works in Midland Masonry’s offices, said she’d last visited the gravestone about 15 years ago with her two young daughters. While the stonemasons were repairing it, McGrath said they’d been inundated with questions from visitors to the church who, like her, were familiar with its history and wondered what had happened.
Though her family has watched “A Christmas Carol” every winter, McGrath plans to add a trip to her holiday schedule again this year to see the restored gravestone. She often visits sites where her colleagues have worked, but this time, it feels like more of a gift - and a reminder of its namesake’s transformed holiday spirit.
“It’d be just nice to go and have a look at it back in place,” she said.
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