Friday 31 January 2014

Eating garlic in confined spaces


This somewhat strange photo is of a vertical and horizontal joint in the Bath Stone wall of a client's stable-block, and is only here to demonstrate the skill - or rather the patience - of old masons which is impossible to find these days.

It is difficult to see without any relative scale, but those joints are about one sixteenth of an inch thick. These days, a very tight joint would be about three-sixteenths of an inch, and the average acceptable one seems to be about three-eighths.

When you consider that each block is six inches thick, fourteen inches high and anything up to three feet wide, then you understand that each block must be absolutely perfectly square and plumb to achieve joints like this. You also begin to understand why - traditionally - all stonemasons are bad-tempered, taciturn sociopaths after about three years of practice. They spend all day repetitively fighting the material with no scope for losing without losing their jobs.

There is square yard upon square yard of this masonry in the stable-block alone, never mind the rest of the huge house and its other outhouses.

The rot began to set in when those crafty masons began to 'feather' the joints to be tight at the front and wide at the back, often needing oyster shells wedged in them to prevent the whole wall from leaning back in the wet mortar. These days, the blocks have to be 90 degrees front to back, so they keep it simple with half-inch joints and computer-controlled saws.

I visited the inside of the Great Pyramid in Egypt once, and at the bottom of the entrance shaft, the walls are made from huge blocks of granite, the same size and weight as steam-trains, all set in a 45 degree angle upwards, with no mortar at all in the beds. It is absolutely no exaggeration to say that you could not slide a cigarette-paper between any of them.

Most people stop at wondering how they moved the things into position, but what astounds me is how they could have cut these gigantic blocks so accurately with only copper chisels.

High up in one of the compartments just in front of the King's Chamber, there is a thousands of years-old shopping list painted onto the stone, and it is of the lunch for the hundreds of masons working there at the time.

It consists mainly of garlic and onions. They must have been - like the embalmers of the time - people to be shunned socially, and not just because of their state of mind.

28 comments:

  1. You may find this strange but I actually worked for a Stonemason from Frome back in the 80's and mainly on churches.
    He was an extraordinary craftsman and drank a lot of tea throughout the day.

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    1. Ok, let's get this straight. If I reply to your seemingly normal comment in an equally normal way, are you going to turn into some sort of screaming, sex-obsessed misanthrope who attacks the other normal people who comment on this blog?

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    2. Good. Which company did you work for, and was the mason's name Finch, by any chance?

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    3. His name was Richard (Griffiths) Dunne and I was his labourer.

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    4. Oh. Sorry, I don't know him, but there was that actor with that name who died recently.

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    5. No matter, he is probably under the turf by now.

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  2. I don't know what to say Tom ….. I don't know much about cracks….. I like garlic and onions though and the Egyptian's were pretty amazing !!!! XXXX

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  3. I tend to not spend too much time thinking about this sort of thing. The nearest I have come to it is admiring the rivets at the Tate Modern. I employ a builder to think about things like three-eighths and five-sixteenths but I do find this fascinating, especially the bit when the stonemasons became crafty with feathering at the front etc. Thanks.

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    1. Next time you need a quote, get in touch with me. Can you change a plug, or do you have a little man in the village to do it for you?

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    2. I have different men in different villages to do all things for me.

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  4. My sister believes extraterrestrials did all the work. I think some day we'll figure out how the guys with copper chisels accomplished the wonders of the world.

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    1. Judging from the average height of the rest of your family, I would say that you ARE the extraterrestrials. If you need to know the secrets, hold a seance and call up some old family members.

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  5. Maybe the smell of garlic and onions was to those times what Chanel No 5 is to today.

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    1. I was about to make an out of date joke about Italy, but Jamie Oliver has stopped that one.

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  6. There are virtually only a handful or real stonemasons here in the US. A problem since I have my heart set on a huge Celtic Cross for my grave. I don't suppose I can reserve your services now can I? We'll feed you all the onions and garlic you want. Well my kids will, being as I'll be dead and all.

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    1. I made one of those for someone in France once, so I could always do it for you. Expensive, though. There is a man somewhere over there who specialises in Celtic stuff, and his name is Walter S Arnold. Look him up and send regards from the second stone-carver in the world to have a website. He was the first. He doesn't know me as Tom, though.

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  7. When I began reading this, it immediately made me think of the pyramids and certain Inca monuments. We always used to cut the touching surfaces slightly concave so that the effect was of 'perfect' craftsmanship, and no pug could be seen. No doubt they did the same.

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    1. p.s. Are you sure that isn't just 2 blocks; not three? Looking closely at the lower block, the two sides do look continuous, but with a scored line!.

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    2. Some of them did, and the others cheated. If you drag (cut the surface) of soft limestone after it is fixed, and you take too much away, the joints will widen up as you go.

      I'm not sure what you are saying, but I am sure that there are three blocks in that photo.

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    3. They didn't even bother to 'score' the stone at its very top; proof, if needed.

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  8. Poor fellows. Maybe they brought their own bread and cheese.....

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