Along with a friend I went to volunteer at Guedelon where they are half way through a 25 year project to build an authentic castle in the 13th century style using only the skills and materials available at the time.
We had made our plans after seeing a few of the organisers running presentations and demonstrations at Bodium castle. We were taken with the project and made enquiries, finding out more and eventually arranging to join them late in October just before they closed the site for the winter.
Part of the deal was that you had to look the part, as the site is a tourist attraction and the visitors like to see the workers looking in keeping with the surroundings. I must admit I took this all to heart and along with the linen smock Sue’s mum made I got some accessories – a leather belt pouch, a bota drinking skin, and even getting contact lenses so that I didn’t need to wear my glasses. Along with the safety boots, the travel and accommodation costs and the site fees (you have to pay to work for them, unless you are a permanent or contract worker), it was getting to become a reasonable expensive trip.
We drove down in my car (as it was a company vehicle), taking the Dover to Dunkirk crossing and stopping the night there before driving on to the gite we had hired, near the castle, in the Burgundy region.
Not knowing what to expect on our first day we got to the site early (I get anxious about being late for things – we were so early at the ferry that we got on the earlier sailing). We were the only ones there and started to wonder if we had made a mistake, when after some time the other staff arrived in dribs and drabs.
Our lack of language skills was a bit of an issue, but luckily we were helped by a few native English speakers and a few other foreigners who were multi lingual, and for the rest we were able to use our pigeon French, their pigeon English and suitable sign language to make ourselves understood. I think we would had got much more out of the experience had we been able to communicate better, and to this end I have ordered a language course to improve my feeble skills.
The weather was glorious for the whole time we were there, some of the hottest few days in October they had known, and no rain to be seen. Had it been different I don’t think we would have enjoyed quite as much. But enjoy it we did.
It is hard to imagine this project ever being permitted in the UK with all the safety implications and nanny state bureaucracy. But in France this site works well. Concessions have been made to safety such as steel top capped boots, hard hats for work under the crane (though they are covered in cloth to disguise them), netting around the working areas at the top of the towers and on the building roof, and face masks and goggles in the quarry to protect the eyes from stone chips and the lungs from silicosis. But for the most part the site looks as much like a medieval work site could.
The first task we were given was to run the squirrel cage, which is what they call the drum crane. A contraption of two large wheels (like hamster wheels) inside which we walked, that in turn pulled a rope over pulleys, to lift stone and mortar from the ditch outside the walls up to the top of the tower for the masons to use. The crane did have extra netting at the sides, a brake (that would not have existed on the original device) and steel armoured rope (that looked normal to the casual eye). It was job normally reserved for slaves and captured prisoners, and on this site it was mostly left to the volunteers as it is hard work.
Next we were put on the top of the great tower to help them build up the layers of stones. From here we had a panoramic view over the entire site and could watch the activities at the blacksmiths, the mortar tent, the stables, the quarry and stone cutter and stone masons buildings, the carpenters lodge and the rope makers building. Only the woodland village, obscured by the trees, was hidden, where the wood cutters, basket maker, tile maker and dyer were resident.
After lunch with the staff I spent much of the rest of the day on my knees placing the stones in the mortar, and it wasn’t until we got back to our accommodation at night that I realised that had been a mistake. I forgot how corrosive lime mortar is and where it had soaked into my trousers it had burned my knees leaving them sore and dried out. I didn’t do that again.
Paul is a woodsman in the winter time in the UK and so when the organisers found out they wanted him to use his skills in the woods. He had arranged to bring some of his tools and many of the staff crowded around him when he brought them out looking at how they differed from the ones they used. One of his specialities is making hazel hurdles (woven fence panels to you and me), and together on the last day we went at gathered the material from the woods and Paul made a hurdle (as I supervised). This went down particularly well with the site supervisor and the woman who started the project (all of the animal enclosures are currently fenced off using wood and wire fencing that is not in keeping with the period), and so he was asked if he would consider coming back the following year for a month to teach others how to make the panels.
As an unskilled labourer I moved around the site doing many different jobs including breaking huge boulders in the quarry using only a hammer, chisel, wedge and sledge-hammer. It was hard work but very rewarding to bust a lump of stone into several pieces by hand. I also used finer tools to shape the stone with a curved face ready for use in the tower. I chopped and split logs in the woodland village so that they could be split into batons and shingles for the roof, and helped the carpenters raise a large oak frame for a new building in the woods.
Our day off was Wednesday, and so we explored the countryside taking in local markets and two contemporary castles; the huge Saint-Fargeau Castle (owned and renovated by the guy who originally came up with the idea for Guedelon), and the wonderful Ratilly Castle where the owners had started a pottery and where they had an old dove/pigeon tower with the original moving ladder still intact.
We were sad to leave at the end of our stay, and I think the other staff were sad to see us go too.
The journey back was long, and tiring, especially when we missed our diversionary route and ended up going around the Paris Peripherique during the morning rush hour (don’t do it – it is horrific! I’ll never complain about the M25 again).
All in all we had a great time and thoroughly recommended it to others. You do not have to break rocks or lift huge timbers as they will find work that suits people of all abilities, but if you are interested in architecture, archaeology, castles, medieval re-enactment or the great outdoors, then this might just be for you.
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