![]() ![]() Yet at Guédelon, solving one mystery often just opens another. Other marks were a mystery, but the masons realised they were simply to identify the maker for accounting, as the medieval masons were paid per stone, and for traceability. It was known some marks were for positioning “so the mason who is going to fetch the stone, he understands directly where it’s going to go, which place in the building”, says Toendra Schrauwen, head banker mason (the banker is the wooden table they work on). When I visited last time, Guédelon was already solving its first mystery, regarding the meaning of masons’ marks on stone blocks. Masons prepare to position the keystone of the cross-rib vault on the wooden centring on the second floor of the Great Tower By putting themselves in 13 th-century workers’ shoes, the makers see similar problems and perhaps find similar solutions, discovering how it may have been done back then, and perhaps solving a few archaeological mysteries in the process. Guédelon’s journey is more important than its destination: a project in experimental archaeology. People are dressed up but safety and comfort is the overriding concern.” “The costumes are not identical 13 th-century costumes and we’re always very clear to point that out when visitors come. “It doesn’t somehow take you out of the experience, even though we’re not pretending,” she adds. But these are very minor things like adding a few centimetres to the crenelated walls. The site is open the public too: “There are some slight compromises that we’ve had to make in terms of copying the architectural model and having a site that’s safe for visitors,” says Preston. ![]() The alternative is carrying heavy wooden buckets up and down ladders!”Ĭarpenters make everything from small tool handles to roof beams, made from smaller, younger trees than the large trunks favoured by today’s saw mills But their argument at the time was this is below human dignity to use this machine,” she says, “and the team petitioned them saying we need them, we can’t actually continue working. For example, we’ve got a braking system, we use modern ropes with known breaking strains. The local inspector of works didn’t want to give us permission to use these, even with additional safety features. ![]() “We were very aware that as the walls grew, we were going to need to find some solution. “When you came, the introduction of the treadwheel winches was a really live issue,” Preston explains. Keeping workers safe is not easy when they’re working with High Middle Ages heavy machinery like the ‘cage à écureuil’, or ‘squirrel cage’, a human-powered treadwheel used to winch materials up the castle walls. There are hard hats, but they’re covered with straw or linen, so nothing kind of sticks out.” “We obviously respect all modern health and safety law,” says spokesperson Sarah Preston, but “we’re able to work without high-vis jackets. It’s not even a demonstration or a museum. But this is not a film set, a piece of theatre or a performance of any sort. Now, when I look up at the towering castle wall and turrets, it still seems outrageous, but they’ve proved it’s possible. Back in 2001, it was more or less just me, in a quarry, chatting to a bunch of passionate but obsessed makers starting out on what seemed like a crazy and perhaps impossible dream: to build a full-scale 13 th-century castle from scratch, using nothing more than the tools, techniques and resources of the time. I pass car parks full of retirees arriving on their day trips, school children streaming out of coaches. There’s still no roar of diesel engines, no creaking of cranes – not even the buzz of a circular saw. ![]() This time too, I can hear the clip-clop of a cart horse, the clang of a blacksmith’s hammer. I recall the peace and quiet, broken only by the tapping of masons’ chisels. I remember this clearing in a forest in rural France. ![]()
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