“It will take our team at least 25 years to complete the castle. This is considerably longer than it would have taken in the early 13th century. We will easily take twice as long as our medieval counterparts because we don’t have the experience that they had – we have had to learn to quarry by hand, to make lime-mortar, to hoist loads; we’ll also take longer because we are open to the public and spend at least half of our time talking to visitors and explaining our work.”
And learn they have. There are few if any rule books for medieval methods of construction. When you arrive at Guédelon you won’t hear the sound of machinery or power tools. You won’t see sacks of plaster and supplies from a builder’s merchant. Almost all materials are locally sourced, sand, stone, wood, as they would have been 800 years ago and are transported by horse and cart.
Timber felled in the forest is hauled using horse and pole arch. Here almost everything is created from scratch – just as it would have been done in the 1200's. Blacksmiths make nails and hammers, carpenters build wooden structures from trees felled in the nearby woods, paint is created from powder found in the local soil
and masons chisel out blocks that can take weeks for a single slab.
“We have to have a reference for every feature within the castle, every window, door, fireplace, tile or mural painting. We have a variety of different sources for these features: castle remains; the results of archaeological research; illustrations on manuscripts; stained glass windows. When it came to researching paving tiles we also made visits to the British Museum which has a fine selection of paving tiles from this period".
On site, methods of construction are worked out by trial and error. “One of the project's principal raisons d'être is to demonstrate and explain to as many people as possible, the craftsmanship of our forebears” says Sarah.
“Each new season brings new challenges but undoubtedly the building of the first cross-rib vault (below) was a turning point in our story. The question of how to raise the final roof timbers when the gable wall had already been built was also one we puzzled over. Equally learning to master the incredibly hard ferruginous sandstone which we find in the quarry was also a great challenge.