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posted by Jason Kottke  ·  gift link

Building a Medieval Castle From Scratch

Since 1997, using only Middle Ages tools & technology, a group has been building a medieval castle in a French forest.

In the heart of Guédelon forest, in an abandoned quarry, a team of master-builders is building a 13th-century castle from scratch. Quarrymen, stonemasons, carpenter-joiners, woodcutters, blacksmiths, tilers, carters and rope makers…are working together to revive heritage craft skills and to shed light on the world of medieval construction.

Here’s a quick, 2-minute video on the effort:

And here’s a longer look:

And from the Absolute History channel, a five-part series on how medieval castles are built, using Guédelon as an example; here’s the first video in the series:

If you find yourself in Burgundy, you can visit the castle — the construction is funded in part by visitors’ fees.

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B
Ben K Edited

Edit: this is the same as the series posted above.

There's a whole BBC series from 2014 about Guédelon, too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrets_of_the_Castle

Would love to visit sometime.

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S
Sylla McClellan

I’ve been and it’s worth it! Fun for the whole family too.

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J
Jason KottkeMOD

From Alan Taylor at the Atlantic, Photos: Building a Medieval Castle in the 21st Century.

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J
Jason KottkeMOD

Archaeology Magazine: How to Build a Medieval Castle.

"At Guédelon, we're looking for what disappeared in traditional archaeology," says Florian Renucci, the master mason and longtime site director at Guédelon, who was formerly a researcher at Sorbonne University. "Experimental archaeology means bringing to life what workers can do. We're always looking, hearing, feeling. Now, with our work, the castle can speak."

The first thing the castle said about windows is that they couldn't have been made of glass. Guédelon's artisans and committee of scientific advisers are constantly scouring medieval texts for clues about how thirteenth-century builders would have handled such details. In the castle's imagined backstory, the fictitious seigneur, or lord, of Guédelon was a cash-conscious minor noble trying to make a home in 1228, putting him — and today's builders of Guédelon — at the mercy of his financial circumstances. In that era, glass was extraordinarily expensive and reserved for places of worship and royal residences. Glasswork, the team learned, swallowed up half the cost of building a cathedral. Unfortunately, whatever material was used to fill the window frames of lesser edifices has left no traces in the archaeological record.

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