Friends build real castle from scratch with simple tools only

So So we’re building a castle from scratch this is a medieval castle this is a castle that never really existed but it’s the type of castle that might have existed in this area in the middle of the 13th century but of course what we’ve also done

Is to create a project in which we use the techniques that we use six seven eight hundred years ago But we’re going to go in through the main gate so the castle’s main gate has been freed up this season because it’s been under construction for the last well since 2017 and you can see the uh tread wheel winch which is mounted on the wall here that was actually

Positioned in front of the main gate so this is the first season that we’ve been able to go into the courtyard through the main gate now i think what i’m going to do is take you inside this tower and i’m going to show you the lifting machinery which we use

So this is the tread wheel winch we’re going to walk in these drums and as we walk this central axle is going to turn and that means that we can wind in this rope so the rope goes up the central mast around the pulley up to the end of

The jib around the second pulley and down and then it’s connected there to the cradle and we’re going to hoist that load up onto the cluster wall is it full yeah it’s full okay ready to go one two three okay yes good job [Applause] so the masons they bring up about three

Metric tons of weight every day we’re building a castle but of course saying that we’re building a medieval castle doesn’t mean anything because the medieval period lasts for a thousand years so you can imagine in a thousand years of human history things change enormously so the difference between a a

Wooden fort being built around the year 500 and a stone fortress in 1500 that obviously they’re worlds apart okay so when we began this project we had to determine when we were building the castle so we’re interested in the 13th century so the 1200s and to be even more

Precise we took one year as our start date so when we began building we said it was the year 12 29 and each year we moved forward in history so here you’re in the year 12 53 okay stop uh so you’re selecting specific rocks uh no

Most of them but we use those that they are like the less beautiful and the smallest one so we recycle every stone have one place so we’re going to the quarry if we chose this area this specific area to build the castle it’s because this is where we find the largest deposit of

Sandstone in this area so that meant that we knew we had enough stone to build the castle so the stone that we find in this quarry is for ruggedness sandstone it’s a compression of sand over millions of years and that produces a stone which is a sandstone but it’s an iron stone it’s

Got a really high iron content here we’re extracting the stone with some pretty large tools so my job here where the stone was extracted i have to cut it to a different piece to different form so to cut it the stone i make some hole

And here the hole i’m going to use this coin like this and after i have to eat very hard this corn and when is in tension there is a chuck right on the stone if i have a bigger stone i have to use more hole

So here in this tunnel i’m going to make five holes i already make three here so my job is just to hit over here like this i follow the line and the stone cut it So i have to play with all the coin i can’t hit the same coin over time because my shock are going to go the other side so i make a right shock around the stone to cut it and i repeat this job a lot of time i use this i put it here

To protect my hole after i make this impression and i can already hit him with the big armor so i use my ears there is a different song fifth puff proof pif is the sound the stone was very strong and i can cut it puff we have a shock

Inside the stone so it’s going to to separate and took the stone was ready to separate so i have to use my ear this is a game if i have a lot of cone it’s very difficult to find the right place just for making tension and here the difficulty is

I have to eat in not a good way it’s better for a carrier man to eat in this axe if i eat like this my back takes some shock so i have to go slowly to not brush myself so i have the movement to just go like this for better hits

Soon after a year i go another way and i continue my job around the stone so this is my job so after i have a port i have to separate another time i make some cube for the stone cutter or sometime just from the mason i just do some

Big stone large stone or some stone like this more right more regular just for the floor so this is work you’ve done over the past couple months yeah for two years yeah three years here yeah every day yes everybody there it’s done and you’ve got a lot of muscle i mean you really

No you see i’m i use more of my brain because it’s not only muscle if you use only muscle you’re going to break your toes and break your back it’s better to use brain concentrate ride the stone hit on the same place the good place and after it’s better for you and for

All of us and when they were building the original part of the castle do they have more stone masons because there’s probably more need yes for the beginning there are more people work here so it’s better for a carrier man to be free because we have someone who make this

Role so just one person is okay but after you have to cut it another time and it’s a job for two persons with another tool in the part of the castle and my job was over the the entrance this is just me okay but not all of us because the castle was

25 years old and i have 21 so this is not possible how much of the castle came out of this spot from here you have to go four or three meter up from my head and this is all of this hole right behind you for this castle hyperlocal What we’ve also done by accident if you like really over the last 25 years is to create a project in which we are literally taking local materials and transforming them so we’re literally taking the the materials from the quarry they’re enquiried and either sent straight to the masons or to the the

Stonemasons lodge where where they’re given a specific geometric shape we take oak from the forest to square up the beams which we need for the roof timbers to make the the bridges the doors we also have sand on site here on the floor you can see the quarry sand which

We find here so this can be used in the mortar we have clay in the forest floor so that clay can then make root isles floor tiles and of course very important in any construction project water so we’ve got nearly all the materials we need which is why this area was chosen

How common is that like how come is it to find a place that has well this is something that raw materials right this is something that we also ask ourselves obviously this is the only castle we’ve ever built but what we’ve been amazed at is how

Much this site provides us yes we’ve got stone yes we’ve got wood but we can also make 15 different colors just using the materials which we find here on site and that’s something we never expected obviously there are materials that we buy in for example just here we have the

Area where we make mortar so the mortar that you can see prepared here on the boards that’s the glue which we use to bind the stones together and it’s lime based you can just see here a lime kiln under construction now the white stones which are going to

Be burnt during the lime burn that’s limestone we haven’t got that here in our quarry we buy that in but even in the middle ages if you didn’t have all the materials you needed then obviously you buy that in from other quarries so we’ll burn those blocks of stone we’ll

Then draw off all the water all the co2 because for 72 hours we’ll bring that kiln up to 900 degrees celsius and during the berm we’ll then draw off all the water or the co2 and we will obtain quickline so quick lime has been deprived of water it has one thing that

It wants to do and that’s absorb any water it comes into contact with so when you plunge that into water that’s a process known as slaking it produces heat and the rock transforms into a putty and it’s the lime putty which we’ve mixed up here with sand and water

It’s a non-hydraulic lime which means it will dry very slowly allowing all the stones in the castle to settle into position so here it is a wall something like this here we have the engine level so the middle the middle and the middle and it’s really precise so when i go here

When i go there really simple the egyptians use it and it’s more precise than the level electro really than the modern level yeah because the modern level of bubbles and two lines so it’s less precise than just one line here here and here it’s the same so yeah it’s

Level so i can make the floor really flat flat so i can see where it’s going to be the inside of the wall we can use that compass so now i have to put more morty over there and this is a material which is being used more and more now in construction

In restoration work this is the material of course which would have been used in the middle ages to build a castle like this so here we’re just working the last little part of the surface and the tools always get smaller as we’re working so for instance when we start off we

Start with the shuts to take off the biggest amount of material and then we can take off the bumps that are left behind with this tool the bosch the masons give us the stones which are cut very quickly it gives us the possibility to build the wall fast

But at a certain point we use a line of realignment so that the masons will build very quickly with rubble stone it doesn’t have a geometric form they’re working on the macro the large scale but when they’re building these walls at a certain point it helps to have a line of realignment

A line to realign the wall and the stones that we’ve cut they all have a slight curve on the front so that when we put them together it gives the circumference of a tower so the blocks will start out like here we have a stone which is in its raw

Condition that is directly taken out of the quarry and then we start with a reference face so we’ll use our set square to find the next face for our lines of realignment we have three faces only the face that is seen the face we will pose with the

Stone and a face with the reference all these stones are seven inches high and it’s the inch of gedlong in the middle ages every lord has their own inch the most basic finish it’s called roshe which is here it looks pretty rough but the benefit of this finish is that it’s fast

So we can build a line of realignment stone which we have here we can do it in half an hour if we were to do the same stone with a layer this tool here takes a lot more time and so to to arrive on this finish it’s six steps instead of two

So it costs more of that and so we use it in places such as the lord’s chambers the stones which have a a nicer finish the toilet goes down it just goes down straight to the floor So this is the castle courtyard itself obviously it’s not finished yet but it’s starting to feel quite complete we’ve got the chapel tower here that was finished in 2019 and in fact because we got the roof on we’ve started the whole program of mural paintings inside the castle

And these paintings they’re all produced using paints which we make on site we’ve got the north range so this is the building which houses the castle’s great hall and then the great tower the great tower isn’t finished yet so this is the finished castle so the main gate is protected by two towers

Forming the gatehouse we have the chapel tower we have the roof line of the north range and this is the great tower now the great tower has just over two-thirds of its final height today it’s level with the roof line of the north range so there’s still another 10 meters another

30 feet at least before it’s finished how long will that take well i think we’ve got about eight to ten years roughly of building work still ahead of us so it’s going to take 35 years more or less we don’t know exactly when the castle will be finished 35

Years to finish a castle is a really long time compared to medieval builders oh really really long time the reason that we’re taking a lot longer is mainly because we spend a lot of time talking we’re here of course to explain our work the techniques that we use six seven

Eight hundred years ago and these these memories aren’t so old that’s the strange thing we still have some visitors older visitors who will remember the blacksmith in the village you know it’s less and less but but it does exist sometimes we’re reviving almost forgotten techniques but often then

There’s just a few generations away um Foreign is um So this is where we prepare all the permanent wooden structures for the castle and so the carpenters work in oak and they use green oak so that means that the wood is freshly felled you don’t leave the wood to season you fell the tree and then you work it

Rapidly because green oak is like working butter it’s really it’s easy to work whereas if you leave that to season it’s going to become just way too hard to use with the hand tools that we have available to us so we’re working in green oak and

We’re working in heart of oak so this is the center of the tree so the carpenter’s job is to identify the center at both extremities of the of the the piece of wood and then they’ll link them up you can see here uh ochre and that’s because a

Line here soaked in ochre has been stretched we can see it here has been stretched from one extremity to the other and then by pulling that taut and then snapping the line that gives you the line so you’ve linked the center of the tree at this end with

The center of the tree at the other end and obviously no tree grows dead straight so you’re always following the grain of the wood and that means that the piece of wood that you’re going to produce will be mechanically really strong now the next job is to remove the bark

And then the next stage is to cut notches into the wood the tree would have been here and then using axes they’ve cut notches into the wood to this line each time so they don’t want to go any deeper that’s all the skill of using your axe to just

Cut to the line and then once they’ve got the notches all the way along they’ll remove the wood between them so that’s going to give us a rough surface to work on and then using a side axe or a broad axe they can then use that as a finishing tool you can see

Here the lines left by the tools they’ve been using and that will give us a really nice smooth finish so this is a side axle board actually you can see it actually has a slightly off-center handle and it has just one cutting edge one beveled edge so that means it can be

Really used to get a nice flat finish to the to the beams it takes a while and obviously these guys that they’re like athletes obviously when you start out it’s tiring for the muscles but you know these guys are they’re used to it it’s about also using the right amount of energy not

Wearing yourself out in the process so that all the transparent site is done by four cart horses all the different materials stone woods clay obviously having cart horses means you need cars and if you have carts you need wheels so we also have a wheel right on site who’s just getting ready tomorrow

To circle some wheels ah i think you shoe i think you shoe a wheel this is the rim here the metallic rim that’s going to be applied to this wooden wheel so the basically a fire will be lit here on the ground and then they’ll lift

The rim uh that will be then placed in the fire and heated we’ve got lots of different tools here for transporting hot metal and then that will be applied to the wooden wheel the wooden wheel will be kept really wet and so as the hot metal touches the wood

The secret of course is to get it hot but not so hot that it burns you can see the marks here where it will be hammered onto the actual wheel here we have the rope makers hut the ropes that we make here are made either from flax or from hemp

Now we might say that we’re using building a medieval castle but we are protected by modern health and safety rules which means you will see anachronisms on site you’ve probably spotted a few already so we have steel toe cap shoes hard hats protective eyewear masks and the ropes

That we make here we use on site for example around the workshops but the rope that you saw on the lifting machine earlier that’s modern that has a known braking strain because you can make very strong rope from plants but when you’re using plants you can never test the breaking strain

Of that rope before you use it you can never be 100 sure it will hoist six seven eight hundred pounds so we take no chances all the ropes that you see on the lifting machinery they’re modern so we know so you haven’t inherited the safety of the middle exactly we are not

Here to collect data on the accident rate of 13th century construction sites so and that’s a good thing so over here is the it’s where you cook the bread it’s the cristo lipa we got two more wow facility it seems like everything moves at a very different pace here

I well it’s weird building in order to better understand and then we want to share the results of our work really so that people have a different understanding of their built heritage So This is where ochili weaves wicker into baskets the baskets that we use on site are the round handled baskets that you can just see in the floor of the workshop and they’re used to transport mortar lime the problem is of course that the lime in the mortar is is corrosive so

She’s constantly having to remake a stock of baskets but these are of course much lighter much easier to transport than heavy wooden buckets is um uh my foreign Foreign Foreign foreign