Building a Medieval Castle from Scratch
123 comments
·January 23, 2025skywal_l
dominicrose
Question is when will we be able to build this in Medieval Dynasty?
wiredfool
This is well worth a visit if you're remotely near the area. We visited a few years back, and the kids thought it might be worth going back for a second day.
One bit of interest -- if constructed back in the 1300s, it would have probably taken 4 years or so. Funding is the biggest difference, historically it would have been built from a rich patron's pockets with no desire to wait 25 years for the protection and image it would provide.
Animats
That's the problem with oversized hobbyist projects, such as restoring steam locomotives. Jobs that should take weeks or months take years.
The Pacific Locomotive Association has had 10-year restorations. Here's how it was done in 12 days in the heyday of British steam.[1] Of course, the repair works had 6,000 people.
tivert
> Of course, the repair works had 6,000 people.
Who were also experts working full time, with plenty of practice with that specific model, and loads of specialized equipment.
vs. a handful of hobbyists.
spenczar5
We can overly fetishize specialization in the past, too, though. Those 6,000 workers were aiming for speed. Amateurs tend to aim for perfect quality.
Sometimes when you look at old things, it can be shocking how “sloppy” the workmanship is, but you have to realize that they were not trying to get perfect paint jobs or smooth castings. They were trying to make money.
sandworm101
They were not all experts. Unlike today, half of them would have been helpers and apprentices. With trade schools almost not a thing, all training was on the job.
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adwf
Love the 1930's Kanban board at 2:35
wongarsu
Another important difference is that in the 1300s the overwhelming majority of Europe's population were farmers. Sure, they did a lot of things besides farming, but you could get a lot of workers for cheap during summer and winter when they weren't needed on the fields.
Gibbon1
Speaking of farmers I've read here and there that sometimes getting skilled workers in the trades you want was a real problem. So if you want a fitted stone building in a place where buildings are only wattle and dub or rocks and mud it might take a lot of wheedling to get the guys you need to take the gig.
pmontra
Nothing changed. Getting skilled workers in the trades you want is still a real problem. I'm learning to do more things myself because of that.
bluGill
Note that here they are using "square" for the face of the walls, but the inside are just whatever they can fit. Less skill needed for the bulk of the stone. Square in quotes because they are not very close, but still a more or less flat sides for out, up, and down. The doors and windows have much better quality stone with a much nicer finish - good tolerances matter here so your door/window fits (though the window probably was just open air or a shutter)
spenczar5
An interesting case of that is the stave church builders of Norway. Stave churches are marvelous woodworking achievements, and too many of them sprung up too quickly in the historical record. The current theory is that there were traveling bands of master craftsmen who would start the project, do the hardest parts, and teach the local peasants how to finish the job. Then they would move on to the next parish.
red-iron-pine
and in some places that was mandatory -- the Corvée system, or similar, were commonly implemented.
essentially you owed the local lord a fixed number of days of work, and/or a tax; days could be traded for tax and vice-versa. usually things like clearing, roads, and bridge building, etc.
hommelix
> One bit of interest -- if constructed back in the 1300s, it would have probably taken 4 years or so. Funding is the biggest difference, historically it would have been built from a rich patron's pockets with no desire to wait 25 years for the protection and image it would provide.
From visiting the site a couple of years ago, the team is about 30 people, so they are looking at a 25-30 years timeframe to build it. In 13 century, the builder would hire about 70 people (typical small lord could not afford to pay for more) and it would take 10-15 years.
sandworm101
And 10-15 years, at a time when most were lucky to make their mid forties, is roughly 25-35 years for us today. Building a stone castle was always a generational endeavour.
adamsilkey
> most were lucky to make it to their mid forties
This is a common misconception. Life expectancy at birth being low reflects high mortality for infants and children. If you can make it into adulthood, most people lived for a relatively long time.
https://sc.edu/uofsc/posts/2022/08/conversation-old-age-is-n....
jrmg
As I understand it, the low life expectancy back then is, if not a myth, at least misleading.
The average adult lived to what we’d still consider old age - the average life expectancy of all humans was ‘just’ low because child mortality was high, and even most child deaths occurred at very early ages.
bluGill
In the 1300s this would have most likely been built out of wood, thus making the 4 year building plan much easier. Wood covered in "whitewash" (limestone based paint) looks enough like stone from a distance and is good enough for the local defense needs. Of course some castles were built from stone, and since wood rots or burns only the stone ones remain today.
Building a wood castle in 4 years seems perfectly reasonable for the crew in question and would have been affordable for the small lord attempting it. The small lord who attempted a stone castle probably did need a lot longer 4 years. That lord probably bankrupted himself from the cost (though a nice castle remains). Or the Lord build the wood castle and then slowly the family upgraded it to stone over the next 400 years or so - each using their own vision of how they want their house to be (and also often adjusting to the latest military technology/defense)
eleveriven
Feels like there history feels alive
mkaic
This reminded me of Bishop's Castle in Colorado, USA — an incredible project built almost entirely by one man (who sadly died last year) working on it nonstop for 40 years:
bwb
I visited this site once with some friends on a road trip... the guy building it (Bishop) started screaming the N-word at some black bikers and then calmly told them he wasn't racist and made some long rant about the government. We split very quickly as the dude was racist and crazy.
mkaic
Damn, I had no idea. That's really unfortunate.
zdragnar
Sounds like some Terry Davis level differences.
red-iron-pine
a physical manifestation of TempleOS in castle form.
weird and intriguing... but make no mistake: also weird
Dilettante_
Damn, who would've thunk the weirdo who builds a castle by himself had a few screws loose /s
slipperybeluga
[dead]
ThinkBeat
It is such a severe accusation to make.
Esp since the guy is dead, and cannot possibly address it.
It is difficult however. I understand the need to warn people.
Salgat
Wikipedia cites a travel book statung that while the place is "major fun", it warns that Bishop is a very unabashedly opinionated and potentially offensive person and will even bring up politics if you visit the castle.
femto
That front stairway is like a bowl of brown M&Ms at a Van Halen concert. Given the code violations on the stairway (no landings [1]), I wouldn't trust the rest of the construction, especially the balconies.
[1] https://assets.bouldercounty.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/...
makeitshine
Most fun at a rave I've ever had was at this castle. The guy built it free climbing the whole time and was in conflict with the government over how he got the rocks, which he mostly pulled from riverbeds on public land.
Another out there spot is in Lucas, Kansas. That guy was also fiercely anti-government.
jrmg
Surely he would also be in conflict about building codes? How was this not stopped? Or is it all actually permitted?
To be clear, I like that this castle exists (although I also like that building and planning codes exist, so I guess I’m conflicted…), I’m just very surprised!
magicpin
Building codes are extremely local, and not really federally regulated much. They’re consistent most places because jurisdictions will just copy paste them.
kergonath
Interesting, I did not know about this one!
It does sound a bit like the Cheval’s Ideal Palace, well worth a visit as well (and also in France like Guédelon, though not in the same area): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Cheval
ThinkingGuy
Reminds me of Coral Castle in Miami-Dade, Florida, US, also built by one man.
Gibbon1
There is also Rubel Castle in Glendora.
eleveriven
Wow... dedicating 40 years of their life to building something on that scale
shellfishgene
Also reminds me of Ra Paulette who dug out elaborately decorated caves in soft rock for decades. Nice documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9n_bHcZaGJs
stevekemp
That reminds me of the Shell Grotto, in the UK:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_Grotto,_Margate
This video makes the scale more apparent (and impressive)
lm28469
Somehow it feels less impressive than dedicating 40 years of your life wage slaving
ortusdux
Tom Scott visited the site to try out their treadmill crane system:
bmelton
Ruth Goodman has a phenomenal series about living in historic times on BBC. She's "lived" in several eras as early as back to the 1620s, and I've enjoyed literally all of them including the one she did from Guedelon, entitled Secrets of the Castle.
Some of them are available for streaming, some appear lost to time (no pun intended) but this one appears to be available on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL72jhKwankOiwI5zt6lC3...
Syonyk
The entire "BBC Farm series" is worth watching: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_historic_farm_series
Ruth Goodman's shows are fun to watch, because regardless of what she's doing, how covered in grime she is, what era she's living and working in, she exudes such a sense of joy, and a general giddy, "I cannot believe that I get to do this as my job!" attitude.
It's like watching the last couple seasons of Mythbusters. There's no doubt that they are having a grand time of it.
0cf8612b2e1e
Could you expand on the last point? Was there a change from the initial seasons? I have only casually watched the show, but everyone seemed to be having a great time, just doing weird engineering things with someone else footing the bill.
Syonyk
The first couple seasons were Jamie and Adam, with a fairly minimal film crew, "doing stuff." Going to random stores to get things and talk to people, and generally having a good time doing it on a shoestring budget. The show largely focused on the process - how the rigs were built. What sort of small scale testing was done in the shop. The tools and processes they used to test this sort of stuff.
The mid-seasons added the build team (Keri, Grant (RIP) and Tory), and started what was, in my opinion, an unwelcome turn to "mainline television." They started adding more myths, more animations to explain things, and a lot of "Here's what we're going to do after the commercial!" and "Now that we're back from the commercial, here's what we've done!" sort of repeated filler - to the point that there was some subreddit that made versions without the filler and repeated content. It was a lot more "Here's the myth, here's the test" sort of TV, and mostly ignored the process.
The build team got along well enough for the first few seasons of it, but towards the later seasons with them, the tension and dislike between various people was obvious even on air. Kari and Tory couldn't stand each other, and the "pranks" on Tory went from "entertaining" to "genuinely mean."
The last few seasons were back to Adam and Jamie, focusing on the build, except with a budget and name recognition that allowed them to do basically anything they wanted - and you could tell they were loving it.
I know there's some contract drama and such behind the scenes as well, but the above is how it felt watching it. The last two seasons are easily my favorites, because they'd worked out how to do the show well, and they were able to test a lot of impressive-scale things that wouldn't have been an option earlier in the show.
atombender
Big fan of the British farm series, which is fantastic, and I love Ruth Goodman and the rest of the gang. I've seen all the farm ones, but somehow I missed this show. Thanks for the tip, this looks exciting!
mxfh
The Experimental archaeology wikipedia article also has a quite exhaustive list on other sites and representation of the topic in popular culture:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_archaeology#Examp...
bluGill
I just watched the first, and I'm compelled to think that it looks like building with 19th century tools as if the 13th century. Some of it is accurate (to what I know), but in other places I keep thinking that the tool in question either didn't exist, or would have been too expensive to use when a much cheaper alternative existed.
In the 19th century mass production was starting and, but it wasn't until the late part that quality steel would have been available in quantity (a little steel would have come from refining iron ore, but most would have been iron). Iron doesn't harden like steel and so the hardening process they showed the blacksmith doing would have been questionable for tools. (though maybe they would have paid for expensive steel in stone cutting - I don't know) They did get hardening wrong - the yellow color is about tempering which is done after hardening. A blacksmith would know this difference, but probably couldn't explain it to the camera and just gave up.
Maybe a castle would have paid for steel tools, but I question if they could get it (any historian know more)? There were a number tools they used of iron that I suspect would have been wood instead.
The wagons seemed to have some advances that I don't think existed yet. Hard to tell because they don't show the wagons in detail, but I've read just enough about wagon development to suspect those were too advanced.
It appears they were using iron hammers on those stone chisels - that is iron wrapped around a wood handle - I'd expect wood mallets would be used instead. Why use expensive iron when a good wood head works just as well (or maybe better)
I also question if saws would have been available in that quantity. I believe they existed, though I'd expect a lot more work would have been done cutting to size with an axe type tool. I also suspect bronze wood tools would have been used - but here I don't know what would have been available in 13th century France.
They showed clothing - but unfortunately (as they admit) their sources are garments saints wore and those were preserved. That feels like looking at the suit Ronald Regan wore in office (something I expect would be preserved in a museum) and completely missing that common people in the 1980s probably were wearing blue jeans for labor, or in an office job they would have ditched the formal jacket. Worse would be preserving a bridesmaid dress (again, something I wouldn't be surprised to see preserved), but young girls probably were wearing blue jeans in 1980 except for those situations. This is something historians often lament - we get a lot of information on the rulers and priest classes - but little information on how the common person lived.
They also had a lot of horses. I would expect oxen to haul the wagons. They are slower, but much cheaper than a horse and work as well. Perhaps better given the state of yokes in those days.
bluGill
Another commenter claims that the iron used was all mined and refined nearby. I cannot verify this claim, but I'll accept it as likely true.
Thus I will relax my criticism of using iron. If that was available nearby of course it would be used. Though I'm only relaxing as I still suspect they are using late 1800's refining to get the amount of steel needed for the chisels. (the hammers could still be pure iron - we don't see heat treatment used on them, and in any case hitting hardened steel on hardened steel will cause something to break). (case hardening would have been known in the 13th century and result in the needed steel, but that heat treats differently so I'm not sure what would have been used).
However even if good ore is found nearby, refining it takes a lot of energy (read wood) and so I would expect they avoid using iron just because of the amount of additional labor to make it.
Speaking of wood. Their blacksmith appears to be using coal not charcoal. This isn't clear, but they probably should be making the charcoal for the blacksmith onsite not using coal. Coal wasn't very important until 17th century England.
While I'm at it, I just noticed their great tower is round. I'm not sure if that would be correct. A cannon was becoming advanced enough to need round towers in the 13th century, but I'm not sure of the timelines, and the thickness of the walls matter. The Chinese built thicker walled castle and so they didn't see gunpoweder/canons as useful tools, but European castle walls were often (not always!) thin enough that a cannon could destroy them. Thicker walls would have then been used for castles in response, and also round towers so that the stones beside could help take the impact of a cannonball that otherwise would go through.
Speaking of stone. Odds are the small local lord would have built their castle out of wood not stone. Wood would have been much less likely to survive to today so we see ruins of stone castles while the wood burned or rotted away.
throwup238
> Speaking of wood. Their blacksmith appears to be using coal not charcoal. This isn't clear, but they probably should be making the charcoal for the blacksmith onsite not using coal. Coal wasn't very important until 17th century England.
Since England had lots of surface coal deposits they started exploiting them in the 13th century for heating. It got so bad that they had to ban coal use in London in 1306 because of the air pollution. Depending on the locality and trade networks, blacksmiths from this era could have had plenty of coal.
The shift in the 17th century was running out of the easy surface deposits and switching to subsurface mining with chain pumps (driven by water wheels at first). That followed from centuries of development and resource exploitation.
malleefowl
Those are fascinating observations! Do you have any recommended reading for those interested in learning about medieval construction?
bluGill
Many different sources and read between the lines. Acoup.blog - he mostly covers earlier times but you can still get a sense. https://christophermschwarz.com/ has done a lot of research into historical woodworking though mostly latter time periods you can still learn a lot.
those are the big ones. After that tons of youtube library books and so on. Just beware that at least half is false and you get to figure out which confident self proclaimed expert knows anything. (i at least admitted a lot of ignorance and speculation above)
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jccooper
They used to keep copies of their really detailed newsletter on the website. Seems to have disappeared. But the last time archive.org saw it is here: https://web.archive.org/web/20201030183911/https://www.guede...
Dunno if they still keep up the newsletter (there's a signup form) in the same manner.
hommelix
Similar in Germany is the site Campus Galli, between lake Constance and the Danube river. The goal is to build an abbey from the 8th century. They got inspired by Guedelon and started more recently.
The website is in german : https://www.campus-galli.de/
davio
They tried making a castle inspired by this near Branson, Missouri that failed:
pianoben
To this day, the best random road-trip discovery of my life. What an amazing place that was! Bummer that it went under so quickly.
mproud
Where they say the site is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, my brain immmeidately thought they meant the website, and I couldn’t understand how that might be plausible!
dep_b
Some websites are closed on Sundays because of religious reasons:
pbhjpbhj
I've seen UK government websites that closed at the weekend, or overnight. I've never seen anything about why.
They might now have stopped doing that, but still were only a couple of years ago.
Dilettante_
Last I saw, the VOD-service of a german gov't TV station only "showed" PG-16 films after 10pm.
eutropia
I wondered if it was another one of those solar powered websites: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/power
SoftTalker
I've thought about it. If your site was only open during working hours, there would be no off-hours support calls. It would be unusual for sure, but the idea has some appeal.
lolinder
Plenty of websites I've seen will hide the support number during off hours, only rendering it on the page when people are available to receive a call.
SoftTalker
Yeah I was thinking more like the site just displays "Closed until 0800" or something instead of offering any functionality at all. If the users can't do anything, there's nothing to support. And no reason to get a call in the middle of the night because "the site is down." (Answer: yes it is).
StefanBatory
I do know of one site that is closed because of author religious beliefs on Sunday, actually! A local Polish one, but still. :P
hsuduebc2
The project that secretly every man hearth craves.
bluGill
I'm not sure if I crave that or https://youtu.be/Cn-sQL2hO1o?feature=shared
sylario
Totaly, and I can attest that kids around me still love castles and big things in general.
escapecharacter
It's incredible that in a thousand years there will be one of these to build a computer from scratch, including kneading the silicon wafers by hand.
amelius
"Don't build your castle in someone else's kingdom" ... I guess they're lucky that France is a republic.
bluGill
This castle is for a small local Lord that would have been subservient to the King of France. So it wasn't in their own kingdom and never intended to be one. In the 13 century Kings gave their military leaders (ie lords/knights - a lord would always be a knight) and that they were intended to protect from bandits. Those Lords then used the castle and their position to collect taxes (though generally not called that). Some of those taxes would go to the king, but most went to support the lord, his army (about 10 guards), build the castle. When the king went to war the lord was expected to turn the peasant men into foot soldiers and then go with the king.
Though if you succeed in building a castle in someone else's kingdom that means it is no longer their kingdom - either it is now your kingdom, or(much more likely) it is part of the kingdom of whatever king you are under. When kings win battles they reward the best of their un-landed supporters with some of the taken over land, those people then become lords and are expected to build a castle (or take over an existing one if it wasn't too destroyed and culture allowed it) on their new land as part of their efforts to hold it for their king.
They really start from scratch. They mine the ore then use it to make steel to make axes to chop wood.
This ensure that the know-how is genuine. They've been able to "rediscover" how things were actually made. It's a sort of retroactive proof of concept.