Castle review thread.

[Montegriffo]

The distrust starting while the fire was still burning when the Macron admin declared the fire an accident. To this date we still don't know if it was an accident or arson.

My money is on the Vikings, they've got previous form in this type of outrage...

When was that, like 970 when the Vikings took Paris ?

How are you feeling about the idea that they may not used historical methods and materials ?

Not as appalled as you.
I like the juxtaposition between old and new. A copy is still a copy no matter how traditional the restoration is. I'd rather know which bits are old and which bits are new.
European oak is not readily available in the lengths or quantities needed to rebuild the roof beams as they were anyway.
Most people will never see the beams. Concentrate on the stone ceiling which is visible to the public and leave the oaks in what little of our forests are left. Over 50 acres of forest were cut down to build the original roof.
Many of the features are relatively modern. The gargoyles and chimera are only 150 years old. The Cathedral was dilapidated and used as little more than a warehouse by the beginning of the 19th century. All but one of its bells were melted down to be used as cannon in the late 18th century. The spire which collapsed was built during a massive reconstruction in the mid-1800s to replace the crumbling medieval original and bore no resemblance to it. One of the three portals in the twin towers is recycled from a Romanesque church and doesn't match the other two Gothic ones.
Really old buildings are everchanging and attempting to recreate the original is almost impossible in most cases.

It's a damn shame that the 13th-century wooden roof was lost but there are many others around Europe. Notre Dame isn't even the best Cathedral in France IMO.

You can't preserve these buildings in aspic. None of them are still the same as they were when they were built seven or eight centuries ago.

[Montegriffo]

I popped into the 14th century St John's church with farmer Paul yesterday. He was picking up his motion sensor camera hoping to have caught some pics of the bats which had been getting in. Unfortunately no luck but as we were there I asked him to show me the nearby Norman motte, known locally as the mount.
edit; apparently, the locals call it the mound, it's just the maps that say St John's mount.

Paul's old family home was the rectory next to the church (famous as a place where Edward VII had received tutorage in 1861 when he was the Prince of Wales) and his sister still lives there.
Unfortunately, the motte is now completely overgrown with trees so there was little to see but Paul told me how he had used it for go-carting and sledging down when he was a child. A former wooden castle which occupied a slight rise next to the old Roman road little is known about it or which family occupied it.

After this slight disappointment, Paul took me to Mettingham castle a mile or so away.
I'd heard of this place but had never seen it.




More accurately described as a fortified Manor house it was granted a licence to crenulate by Edward III (of Crecy fame) and built in the 1340s.
Recently £300k was raised to stabilize the crumbling towers and remove the ivy which is the worst enemy of castles since the trebuchet or civil war gun powder.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mettingham_Castle

Less than 5 miles from the farm I'm slightly ashamed how little I knew about both of these places until yesterday.

As a bonus, while visiting the church, we bumped into the curator of the local Flixton Air Museum which is at a former WWII US airbase.
Paul knew the curator and his wife so I was able to listen to all sorts of tales about local War history including talk of the B24 which had crashed a couple of miles from the farm. One of its engines had remained in a ditch, where it fell, for decades.
One of the stories Paul told was of his mother helping out a young black American whose truck had broken down outside the house. After using her phone to contact the airbase for assistance she talked to him as he waited for help. Apparently, around 4 trucks from the airbase with white drivers drove straight past without stopping and he had to wait for several hrs until a truck driven by a fellow black turned up to tow him back to base. The blacks at the airbase lived separately in tents whilst the whites occupied the buildings.
That sort of racial segregation and discrimination was completely unknown in England and the locals had no problems integrating with the blacks they met.
Some of the local pubs had blacks only and whites only days in order to comply with the American segregation rules. The locals could and would use the pubs on blacks only days but the white airmen would stay away.

It turns out that Paul has the radio from the crashed B24 in the attic of his sister's house and offered it to the museum as part of its display of bits from the crash.
I've offered to climb the rotten ladder into the loft to retrieve it and if I take it to the museum I might get a VIP tour of the exhibits.



https://www.aviationmuseum.net/

[C-Mag]

Keep em coming

[Montegriffo]

I like this new vision for Notre Dame.
Story is from May and unlikely to come to fruition.

The proposal, suggested by Belgian-French architect Vincent Callebaut, envisions a ‘Gothic and biomimetic forest’ for the cathedral, along with a ‘solar and ventilated roof’.

According to the proposal on the architect’s website, the three-dimensional Gothic stained glass graft could be designed to produce all the electricity, heat and passive ventilation the cathedral might require.

As per the architect’s website:

The new wooden frame is covered with a three-dimensional crystal glass dress subdivided into faceted diamond-shaped elements.

These crystals consist of an organic active layer, made of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen, which absorbs light and transforms it into power. This energy, stored in hydrogen fuel cells, will be directly redistributed throughout the cathedral.

Callebaut also states the design would incorporate a garden feature not just for ‘contemplation and meditation’, but to grow up to 21 tons of fruits and vegetables to be redistributed for free each year.

https://www.unilad.co.uk/news/new-desig ... ncredible/

[Montegriffo]

Stunning...





Some of the suggestions are outright crazy






https://www.boredpanda.com/notre-dame-c ... gn=organic

[Montegriffo]

Latest news...

The army general overseeing the reconstruction of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris has said the building's chief architect should "shut his mouth".

General Jean-Louis Georgelin and architect Philippe Villeneuve disagree over whether the cathedral's new spire should look modern or medieval.

Notre Dame caught fire in April, losing its spire, roof and many artefacts.

French President Emmanuel Macron has set a five-year deadline for completing the huge restoration project.

Some experts warn that this target may be too ambitious - and Mr Villeneuve has previously said the only way it can be met is if the spire is a replica of the one that burned down.

Last month, Mr Villeneuve told the broadcaster RTL: "Either I restore it identically... or they make a contemporary spire and it will be someone else [doing it]."
But President Macron and General Georgelin both believe the new spire should be "contemporary".

[Hastur]

They will go for one like this.


It is very current for France and it might safeguard against future fires.

[C-Mag]

No Shit Hastur

[C-Mag]

I'm in the traditionalist camp.

Not really for the sake of it being traditional, but for the sake of the skills and traditions of craftsmanship and medieval engineering that built it.

Fuck making it look like a glass domed shopping mall.

The Catholic Church cucked out not holding a Christmas mass there. It didn't need to be big. Twenty or Fifty people would have been fine. It shows weakness in the Church to let Christmas pass without celebrating the birth of Christ.

[Montegriffo]

If those medieval craftsmen had the ability to make a crystal roof garden you know they would have done it.