In praise of wonky trees

[CelticRambler]

There is a "living archeology" project underway in France these last fifteen years, at a site called Guédelon. A couple of decades ago, a chateau renovation in a place called Saint Fargeau revealed an almost complete earlier castle embedded within the walls, which provided the inspiration for a bunch of Burgundians to embark on the construction of a brand new mediaeval château-fort, built using only mediaeval techniques.

I pass through the town of Saint Fargeau fairly frequently on my way to one particular contract, sometimes park beside the wrapped-up chateau, but to my great regret, I never realised how close Guédelon was, nor how early in the process they were when I was first told about it. It would have been great to see it evolve from a roughly cleared site to a proper, habitable building.

Anyway, watching a documentary on it recently, the roofers remarked that it's proven very difficult to get the "right" wood for the roof, as they discovered that the mediaeval tradition was to use trees with a natural curvature, such as grew in the unmanicured, non-commercial forests of the day, as these were much stronger than straight trees cut into a curve.

There are a few documentaries on the project on YouTube. They all show up for me as the French editions, but I think this Arte one might have been a co-production with the BBC or another English company, so a search from an Irish IP address might bring that up (I'm only seeing the French ones).



Hope there aren't too many stones in that video for the woodworking forum ... They built a flour mill, complete with all-wood water-wheel, though.

[kadman]

I am pretty sure I saw that documentary. It was very good. It was common practice to select the trees for their curvature and strength
in both roofs and especially ship building. The reason the curvature was so strong was the fact that the tree arched over, and growth on the low side of the curve increased in thickness. basically to hold the trees or branches from falling. This was called reaction wood, and was far more dense than its opposite side.

Oak by its nature was a curvy material, so was a great source for shipbuilding and roofing back then. Nowadays we seek to pack as much timber into a small amount of land to maximise the productivity of the crop. But we basically end up with crap timber.
At one time, not that long ago, Irelands woodland covered a large of the country.

Now we have forests of planted acidic trees for construction material, and pulp. But forgot all about our native woodland, most of which is gone.
I grew all of my trees at home from seed that I gathered. And pride of place is a Macrocarpa planted 25 years ago, that is now nearly 3' in diameter.

[490808]

Think this is what you are on about more episodes if you go looking for them and another series from Absolute History on the same castle.



If you speak French then there are loads more.