… Well a few, anyway. not enough for a Pride march, maybe, but a pretty colourful bunch.
Red people look at some pieces of steel.
Yellow people look at a hole in the castle wall.
Orange people play in the dirt.
(Please note judicious use of large "Covid Mask" undercrackers to shield sensitive folk from the ghastly sight of builders' arse-crack). When you see a signboard saying "Considerate Builders' Scheme" this is what they mean …
Blue people play with asbestos.
They have their own Little Blue World to live in.
… And, as promised, a grinning archæologist points at a shovel.
One of the few silver linings of Covid has been that the castle opening deadline has been booted into touch and we've used the lockdowns to expand the archæological brief to areas outside the original scope.
Here, Happy Heather has discovered a prison-era stair and bricked-up opening to the old dungeons.
Hints of even more exciting stuff are leaking down the hill from the castle as I write and I'll keep you informed.
We'll finish today with a couple of general shots of the inside of the keep with lots of scaffolding sitting on the temporary crash-deck floor which protects the archæology beneath.
More soon …
6 comments:
Ooooh, scaffolding. The hurdles I read about, and saw in the races, were made of willow twigs tied together. One set of races, the hurdles more resembled the black fencing you see put up around building sites, while the second set of races had bigger jumps that looked to be made of actual twigs.
What I've been getting out of your posts, Dive, is that your company is trying to rip out the bad stuff and replace with newer better stuff, all without touching the proper olde stuff. And have it all look like it belongs together.
Yup, scaffolding … I like the bamboo scaffolding that the Chinese use. It's amazingly strong and flexible and looks scary as hell.
My principal job is to restore the keep to how it looked in 1121 but with lifts, lots of escape stairs, modern standards of fireproofing, vastly upgraded rainwater drainage (for climate change … when I started as an Architect we designed to a 1 in 100 year storm capacity, but these days we are getting those 1 in 100 year storms several times a year) and much more, while not damaging any of the original Norman fabric.
We're making every level fully accessible, from the roof to the dungeons and adding a viewing area over the roof (but below battlement level) to allow for views across the city and as a special event location.
Outside the keep is Gabi and Erin's area, ripping out all the 1960s crap and replacing it with a glass atrium giving great views of the keep, plus lots of loos (essential)!
See April the 12th's post for a better idea of how it will look.
Fascinating! A prison-era stair and blocked entrance to the dungeon! Keep discovering stuff, don't open yet.
The archæologists are sending me the 3D model of their latest discoveries. There will be pics!
In John Porchmouth's 1969 classic "Creative Crafts for Today" (purchased recently at a Berkeley jumble sale) he fails to mention in the section on crafting with asbestos that staying within a Little Blue World while wearing a blue protective suit, gloves and breathing mask are recommended. Instead he just says things like, "Cut or break asbestos into different shapes, and assemble them to make a contrast of flat or corrugated surfaces."
WOAH, Katie!
Mind you, it wasn't until 1984 that legislation was passed banning the stuff, even though the asbestos industry had known about asbestosis for decades. Nasty, nasty stuff.
An asbestos mosaic would be absolutely deadly.
It's also a major component of bakelite and I have loads of vintage bakelite stuff. My crazed and cracked Art Deco fruit bowl is now only used for display. Yikes!
Sounds like a real fun book, though.
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