Have Fun Building the Castle

From the outbox of Meyer’s inbox —

A while back I put forth the notion in the Water Cooler that we should get together all the experience tradesmen in our mrW tradesmen directory and build something. The idea was met with an enthusiastic response. But cyber ideas are one thing and stepping out into the real world to make it happen is quite another. Here are some folks who are the living embodiment of having fun with a “weekend project.” Does this mean I think we should all get together and build a castle? Yes… yes, I do. Most certainly.

NEW CASTLE BRINGS BACK MEDIEVAL MEMORIES by Deb Peterson, reporting for USA Today

LEAD HILL, Ark. — The clink of hammers against chisels fills the air as stone masons shape quarried rock high up in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas.
An apprentice struggles to lift a large stone into place and calls for mortar.

Cody Hannah dips a wooden bucket into a pond, fetches water and hooks the bucket on a yoke across his shoulders. Hannah, 28, of Lead Hill, Ark., is one of 25 artisans and craftsmen, dressed in tunics authentic to the 13th century, laboring to build a medieval castle here — using only medieval material and methods.

“We are the modern-day Barney Rubble and Fred Flintstone,” Hannah says, using a pop culture reference to describe the stone work and workers’ attire.

The Ozark Medieval Fortress, a 20-year-long work in progress, will serve as an outdoor classroom where students experience living history and learn about architecture, geometry, economics and geology. The castle-in-the-making opens to the public May 1, when students and volunteers will be able to participate in the actual building process.

French project was inspiration

The project, the second such original castle construction in the world, originated in October 2008, when Lead Hill residents Jean-Marc Mirat, 70, and his wife, Solange, 70, both natives of France, visited a similar project in Guédelon, France.

While there they met Michel Guyot, 63, of Saint Fargeau, Burgundy, who in 1979 had purchased the crumbling 1,000-year-old Château Saint-Fargeau, located two hours south of Paris. Archaeologists hired by Guyot discovered 13th-century stone walls hidden behind red brick.

The mortar within was still moist, Guyot says. The discovery set Guyot on a path of not only restoring the old castles of France, he says, but building new ones using medieval methods. “We’re losing some of our old castles,” he says.

The first castle Guyot started building from the ground up is Guédelon in Yonne, Burgundy. Work began in 1997 and is scheduled for completion in 2022. The Mirats envisioned a similar endeavor in their own Ozark forest.

Read the rest and check out the pictures here.