It seems some individuals enjoy "re-living the 13th century" -- _if_ the experience is offered in a "non-profit" theme park.
***** Reliving the 1200's With Sweat, Muscle and No-Tech Tools
By CHRISTOPHER HALL
REIGNY, France
IN a forest clearing near this remote village in Burgundy, three dozen men and women - myself included - are hard at work on an overcast July morning in the year 1231.
Dressed in medieval garb of drab pants and short, belted tunics, some of us twist hemp fibers into rope, haul wooden buckets filled with mortar or hand-saw oak trunks into planks. Others forge tools using metal smelted from iron-bearing sandstone, groom a pair of huge draft horses or quarry large chunks of rock and shape them into rectangular blocks with nothing more than hammer, chisel and muscle.
The forest echoes with the bleating of sheep and the ping of stoneworkers' tools, and the smell is a mixture of fresh earth, dung and burning wood. Except for a few modern intrusions like safety glasses or the occasional cigarette dangling from a worker's lips - this is actually France in 2002, after all - it is an ancient scene lifted from the pages of an illuminated manuscript.
But this is no book, as my blisters and aching muscles can attest, and our all-too-real labor is directed to one purpose: building a castle. Not a stucco knockoff à la Disney that's thrown together in a month or two, but a massive, hewn-stone fortress, like the ones built in the 1200's. The castle, called Guédelon, will take 25 years to complete using the latest in 13th-century technology. When finished, it will cover more than 27,000 square feet - a modest figure, by medieval standards - and reach a height of 95 feet.
Now in its sixth year, with exterior walls and one tower well under way, Guédelon has become a living laboratory in which academic hypotheses about medieval building techniques can be tested. And with 145,000 paying visitors last year, the project, a nonprofit one, is also proving to be an economic boon to Burgundy's undeveloped Puisaye district, which lacks the famous and lucrative vineyards found elsewhere in the region, about 90 miles southeast of Paris. Indeed, Guédelon generated about $9 million in revenue last year and employs 51 construction, office and service workers.
But for many workers, Guédelon is above all a grand adventure.
"At first people said we were crazy to spend so much time building a 13th-century castle," said Michel Guyot, the project's principal creator, a preservationist who has bought and restored his own castle nearby. "But this is something no one in the 21st century has ever seen or done. That's why we've been able to attract dedicated workers, not to mention the volunteers and visitors who return again and again."
The project began in 1997 with plans drawn by Jacques Moulin, the architect in charge of French historic monuments, "and this patch of forest and quarry provide almost all of the needed materials," Mr. Guyot says.
The project's workers are diverse. Some apply skills they've learned as tradesmen. "I came here originally as a volunteer," says Clément Guérard, 30, a stonecutter. "After one day, I knew I wanted to stay." A carpenter, Jean-Noël Morisset, 41, moved from Vichy with his wife and two sons to take a job at Guédelon and is now assistant chief of the work site.
Other workers made a total break with past careers. Thierry Darques, 49, Guédelon's blacksmith, is a former journalist. ("We all make mistakes," he deadpans.) Yvon Herouart, a 39-year-old ropemaker, used to operate heavy equipment, and Diana Hajdu, 30, abandoned seven years of law study to make floor tiles for the castle.
"My parents were horrified," she says as she slaps another mud-and-straw layer onto a short wall she is building for her workshop. "But now they can see that this is my passion."
I also understand the attraction of Guédelon. From the moment I came across its Web site (www.guedelon.org), Guédelon tapped into my childhood dream of building a castle and fed my adult fantasy of escaping, even for a few days, the I-need-it-yesterday pace of the 21st century. The idea of stepping back into the 1200's, as one of the dozen or so volunteers who labor alongside the employees was irresistible.
In my volunteer application I declared in passable French that I was manually dexterous, healthy and 48 years old. Two hours after my arrival, I find myself with a hunk of stone before me, a hammer and chisel in my hands, and a few general instructions from a stonecutter, Jean-François Dejean, 35, on how to make a 60-pound block with a sloped face for the castle rampart. An experienced stonecutter could finish the task in an afternoon, but it takes me nearly two days of steady chipping. For Mr. Dejean, however, who once earned his living by polishing granite and marble for kitchens and bathrooms, speed is not important. "We're taking 25 years to build this castle," he reminds me, "and with luck it will be around for the next 1,000."
The work is hard. By the end of each day, I am covered in grit and sweat and my back is tired. Yet there is plenty of time during the day to do the job right and still look at passing clouds or trade wisecracks with workers.
Part of our day is spent fielding questions from the camera-toting tourists who crowd the site trying to catch a glimpse of the Middle Ages in action. The visitors are mostly French. Their questions range from the mundane ("Aren't you hot?") to the technical. One elderly French gentleman, detecting a foreign accent in my response, asks if I am English. "Thank goodness," he says when I tell him I'm American. "Can't have an Englishman working on a French castle, can we?"
What none of the visitors asks, however, is how long Guédelon will last. It is a question that increasingly comes to mind as I carve a block from raw stone, chisel my lapidary mark onto it, just like a stonecutter from 800 years ago, and then help the mason set the block into the wall.
Will my stone, will this castle, endure? Impossible to say with any certainty, of course, but I take my cue from Jean-François Dejean and wager that they'll both be around 1,000 years from now. It's not every day you can say that.
Christopher Hall, a San Francisco-based journalist, has written for Architectural Digest and Preservation.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/18/arts/design/18HALL.html> ***** -- Yoshie
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