So what have I been up to during my extended sabbatical from dear old Blogville?
Well the fools let me loose on the Tudor panelled rooms at Trinity College, Cambridge and then plonked Norwich Castle in my lap.
The Castle project, called Royal Palace Reborn, intends to return the gutted Keep to how it was at Christmas, 1121, when Henry the First and his second wife, Adeliza of Louvain, moved in and threw a big old partay.
So I've been building this here model. It's a little unwieldy, being currently around three-quarters of a terabyte, but it's my baby. All the construction detailing and information is stored in the model so they can build from it. This view shows the new Great Hall with minstrel's gallery and the archæological exhibit below.
Here we see the King's Chamber (with the red curtains) and the Great Hall on the right. The tinkly light things above the archæology are "Ghost Arches"; the original arches having long disappeared, we're putting back ghosts of them with thousands of little LEDs.
We're putting a big viewing platform on the roof so you can see the whole city, and for the first time in 900 years, making the whole thing accessible to all, from dungeons to roof.
So anyhoo, as part of the project, Old Dive, as Architect and historic buildings expert, put together a side project: a series of lectures telling the history of the Castle. As these were for internal company use only, they tended to get a little Dive-ish and in places exceedingly silly and gross.
In my next post I shall begin posting a potted version as I know Petrea especially loves old history.
Hope you enjoy it. In the meantime, the archæologists are digging furiously away in the basement and there's a massive tower crane looming over the Keep so that we can start work (Covid safely).
This is the view of it from my office, where I'm working on the Castle three days a week and hopefully posting some bloggery in between.
9 comments:
How cool is that, Dive! That sounds so interesting. When you mentioned the "thousands of little LEDs" I was reminded of the suspended candles in harry Potter's Hogwarts Dining Hall. They were so beautiful. Anyway, since you are adding so much to the Castle, is there a chance of you ever getting insulated windows in your office?
Ha! No chance of that, Speedway. The wind was howling through my office yesterday with towels on the windowsills to soak up the leaks.
This is so amazing I can hardly stand it! You are the big shit, Dive (I mean that in a good way). I knew there was a lot going on at Norwich Castle but I didn't know you were one of the perpetrators.
I fess up, Petrea. It's taken us years to get to this stage. There are three of us Architects, Erin and Gabriela are doing all the works outside of the keep (to the 1830s prison which is the main museum) and I've got the historic fabric and the works inside the keep. We've got our firm, a Structural Engineering firm and a mechanical and electrical consultant as the core, working with Norfolk Museums Service and Historic England. It will take two years and £13.5 million to complete. I'll be posting updates as the work progresses.
I'm going to brag to people that I know you.
Hee hee, Petrea; I've been bragging that I know you for years. :)
Hee hee, indeed. They say, "who?"
So happy that you are part of this and you are back blogging again x
I show them your books and tell them about Ryoko, Petrea. They are suitably impressed :)
Thanks, Mum. I got so sick of FB's attention span. I need to write more than one sentence at a time.
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