Sometimes you just gotta drill out that old filling.
Ahh … That feels much better.
If you remember, when Boardman's team demolished Soane's prison blocks within the castle keep, they found he'd built them on six to eight feet of - well basically, shit … six-hundred years worth of poo and rubbish from the torture chambers and cells of the early gaol.
This was actually quite fortunate for us as the lower parts of the basement stonework remained undisturbed by Soane's vandalism.
Boardman inserted a lower floor at the same level as Soane's ground floor and made up the difference in levels with massive slabs of concrete plonked on top of the original Norman stonework (see top photo).
That nice man with his monster dentist's drill crunched his way through most of it and the archæologists finished the job and now we have a lovely piece of the original Norman keep basement on display.
7 comments:
It looks much better.
Seems like the poopaeologists (or whatever you call those who study ancient feces) would have a field day with Soane's 600 years of shit. Much more valuable than cement.
And there's still five yards depth of it in the moat for them to play in. Poopæologist wins neologism of the day.
Oooh … Oooh … I'm in the office now. Erin and Natasha have been weeding out the archives and the dead store (I love that name) and I let them know I'd like to check anything interesting before it gets trashed.
This morning Erin left a large box on my desk and in it I found all the joinery working drawings for the last renovations of Hampton Court Palace that we did in the 1990s (before my time here).
Measured drawings of every fireplace, moulding, window, door, panel and much more. Hundreds of the buggers. They are now in the collection of Old Dive ready for me to pore over them obsessively. I'll be sure and use some of the timber mouldings from Henry VIII's chambers when I get the chance.
Happy old me.
This is amazing, Dive. I want to follow you around to work every day. I have an idea for a novel set in Hampton Court Palace, but of course I've only been there once and looking at floor plans online doesn't give me what I need.
It's a pretty fun box of joy, Petrea. If your novel idea revolves around the work of a carpenter building the palace I now have a great resource for you.
Probably not the most gripping of books, though …
Actually, that could work with my premise...
Hee hee.
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