Westbury stonemason Nick Johnson is building a memorial in honour of the First World War Christmas truce football game of December 1914 for the Football Association.

The match, between German and Allied troops, is remembered for bringing the war to a temporary halt, as depicted recently in Sainsbury’s new Christmas advert, and is seen as one of the most iconic moments of the conflict.

Mr Johnson, who has run Westbury stonemason’s Young Johnson for 25 years, has been asked to build the memorial, which will be sited at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire and officially unveiled in December.

The 50-year-old visited the National Memorial Arboretum on Armistice Day this month and met with England manager Roy Hodgson, coach Gareth Southgate and England stars Theo Walcott, Joe Hart, Jack Butland and Nathan Redmond.

Mr Johnson said: “I was asked to do the memorial a couple of months ago as I have done several memorials for the arboretum before. It was set as a school project for children to design it and then I was asked to make it.

“It was great to meet the manager and some of the players on Armistice Day, even though I’m not much of a football fan and I didn’t know who most of the players were at the time.

“When I got back to work everyone was saying who they were, but I obviously knew who the manager was. It’s certainly not every day you get to say you’ve met the manager of the national football team.

“It’s a great honour to be asked to do the memorial and the design is really impressive, so I’m looking forward to it being unveiled at the arboretum in December.”

Mr Johnson will be using a design created by ten-year-old Spencer Turner, from Newcastle, who won a national competition backed by Prince William. His design was chosen by the Prince and Arsenal striker Walcott.

He said: “The day was more about Spencer and I was showing him how to cut letters in a piece of stone when the England players walked in, but he didn’t even notice they were there at first as he was concentrating so hard.

“He seemed to enjoy being a stonemason as much as meeting the England players and I let him carve some letters into the actual memorial.”