In 1997 an experimental archeology project was begun near Treigny, France. The project was to build a new castle, Guédelon Castle, using only the materials and methods available in the 13th century, in order to learn more about how castles were built. It took 25 years and involved hundreds of craftsmen, bringing about whole new generations of masons, carpenters, blacksmiths, etc., who had years of experience in medieval building methods. In 2019 Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris burned down and many of these craftsmen went to work on the rebuilding project.
Wikipedia article explaining the castle project -- lots of pics
Guardian article on the Guédelon Castle craftsmen going to work on Notre Dame
For anyone who is interested in 13th century castle building, I can't recommend the five episodes of the BBC series Secrets of the Castle highly enough. It seems to be available for free on YouTube. (That said, if you already know a great deal about the topic, the series was made for a popular audience and may not be all that exciting.)
Here is the Guédelon Castle website, especially useful if you plan to visit.
5 comments:
I second the recommendation on the program. It’s a very good introduction to castle building and the crafts involved.
LittleRed1
Thank you for the links. I'm trying to remember where I saw a project in America that aimed to maintain old trades and their techniques in a similar way, but it eludes me currently.
Perhaps also of interest is a Carmelite Monastery in Wyoming where they are building a new Monastery in Gothic style, but utilizing new technologies (along with old) to build it themselves. It's also fascinating to see.
https://www.youtube.com/@carmelitemonks
There’s the John C. Campbell folk school.
https://www.folkschool.org/
Could be the Artist-Blacksmith’s Association of North America, though it's mostly focused on blacksmithing and related arts.
https://abana.org/
Ah, those both look *very* interesting! Not what I was thinking of, but you've both added to my list of things I'd like to do if I had the money and time! It was an American site that similarly was building structures in the medieval way with mostly medieval means, if I remember correctly, and somewhere in middle America, Missouri maybe? I wish I could remember enough to do an accurate search, but maybe more will percolate up in my mind later. Regardless, thank you!
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