Since purchasing his historic Ipswich house in the early 2000s, Will Shields has DIYed various interior renovations with a focus on balancing the home’s character with the demands of modern living. In rethinking his backyard, he decided to call in professionals, seeking to collaborate with craftspeople who share his reverence for traditional materials and methods. Shields envisioned a serene pool and patio that would combine contemporary design with old-world masonry techniques—a stonework oasis perfectly integrated with the home and the landscape. To bring this vision to life, he enlisted Matt Mastromarino of Masco Construction, a fourth-generation mason, and chose two precast plunge pools from Soake Pools: a 4-foot-by-4-foot cold plunge and a 7-by-13-foot year-round plunge pool.
The backyard offered a modest starting point for the project: a small garden, some granite curbs used as edging and a bluestone patio that abruptly ended near a pair of columns. Mastromarino and his team expanded the patio by around 100 square feet in a way that would feel cohesive, peeling back the existing stonework and adding new sections to create a unified look. “It’s like painting. Even if you get the exact color, it’s not going to match” unless you integrate the new stone carefully, Mastromarino explains. Using this technique, “it flows seamlessly. It looks like it’s been there, or it looks like we blended stone together.”
The two Soake Pools arrived together on a single crane-equipped truck—a memorable moment for Mastromarino, as this was the first time he had installed the company’s cold plunge in tandem with a larger unit. The larger pool can be set to a range of temperatures, allowing for winter use as a hot tub and summer use as a cool swimming pool. “The great thing about that unit is that you can use it all year round,” says Mastromarino. He was constrained in how to lay out the pools, as the placement of the plumbing apparatus forced the need for at least four feet between them. He decided to increase the distance to seven feet enough space for lounging in chairs or laying out on towels—and used granite planks to form a deck that also wraps around both pools. The deck is somewhat wider on the backside of the pools to conceal the mechanics of their automated cover system, with removable stones to allow maintenance access without disrupting the seamless look.
Mastromarino sourced Cape Ann granite from a quarry less than 20 miles away, along with reclaimed blocks from local sites and stone yards. Much of this stone was in the form of massive blocks that had previously been put to other uses. Working with such blocks, a technique he calls structural masonry, is a traditional method that contrasts with the typical modern approach of using thinner, lighter-weight stone veneer to create a particular look. “You’re putting together a roster of antique blocks of granite,” Mastromarino says. “It’s cool because a lot of the stone has been cut for a certain purpose, like it’s already been made into a curb or a bridge block, and then I take it and use it for what I want it to be.”
Mastromarino employs hand tools like hammers, chisels and wedges to shape each block. This method preserves the weathered textures and natural curves created by decades of exposure. As Mastromarino puts it, working with full stone rather than thin veneer means “every piece is kind of special and different.” But the decision to use hand-shaping isn’t just aesthetic: It can be difficult or impossible to cut stones that are two feet thick or more any other way on the job site. Using such large slabs also allowed Mastromarino to include bold structural elements that would be difficult or impossible to construct with modern stonework methods.
A prominent example is the cantilevered floating stone staircase on the backside of the installation inspired by stiles of the British Isles. He wanted to build this addition to the project simply because he could. “It’s kind of a cool thing we can do because we’re using structural stone,” he says. “The majority of the stone is built into the wall.” Mastromarino found it satisfying to use reclaimed stone and traditional techniques to create an oasis that fit the historic home while centering on modern pool technology: “The thing I really liked about the project was being able to be creative with reclaimed material.”
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