The Walled Harbour of Wilberton - Diorama - Aedes Ars - 1/87 - by Kevin - December 2020

[Kevin]

good evening eveyone

 

its me the silly old one living in Somerset

 

Day 9 since restart, and still going at it

 

one side is almost finished, and the other side will be tomorrow,  not sure about the tower, trying to work out how to complete it, a spire is on the cards at present, plus i might put in some openings from the bells, bats and spiders

 

a;though i have no intentions of restarting this, i must be more careful when planning a building from scratch, as there is a mismatch in brick heights on one side compared to the other, i have hidden it as best i can, hence the thin bricks at the top of the windows

 

 

 

 

Edited December 10, 2020 by Kevin

[Waitoa]

Looks good, like the windows

[amateur]

Reading of your new layout, for one moment I thought you were making an attempt to do this:

 

typical mainland Europe solutionto have a river (and harbour) inside your city, and unwanted guests outside.

 

Jan

[amateur]

And with respect to arches inthe inside of the wall. Not uncommon in medieval walls:

 

 

Jan

 

PS this is the inside of oneof the gates you showed before: the Helpoort in Maastricht, Netherlands, dating back to around 1250, although in its current form mainly resulting from a rather romantic view on the middle ages in 1880... 

[Egilman]

As far as the grade and sizing of blocks, remember, an old country church wouldn't have the level of expertise in stone masonry that the big cities would have, a simple stone cutter in the city would be a project manager or master builder in the country.....  When the church would order a monastery for a hamlet out in the boonies, they would send a stone cutter on a mission to get it built, it's how a stone cutter got promoted to stone setter/builder in the guild.....

 

The stones may look rough, but that is the way it was and lends an authenticity to the construction.... your solution to the different sized stones resembles many such fixes I've seen when I was studying medieval arch... The work was difficult and hard and they wouldn't tear down a half built stone wall to fix that kind of error..... They would adapt to the error and continue the build....

 

I think your doing fine, good work.... (understanding that there is a learning process going on as well)

 

EG

Edited December 10, 2020 by Egilman

[Ekis]

You are progressing very very fast on your project! Bravo ! 👋
Just one little thing: you should sand down each horizontal row of your walls before going up the next one to avoid the effects of waves on your buildings.

[Old Collingwood]

I admire what you all do with these  stone buildings   - you are doing some really fine work Kevin  - your determination to keep challenging what you build  shows the range of talent you have my friend.

 

OC.

[popeye the sailor]

you've made some great progress since I last looked in Kevin........your plans seem to be growing too     you got bit!

[Kevin]

12 hours ago, amateur said:

Reading of your new layout, for one moment I thought you were making an attempt to do this:

 

typical mainland Europe solutionto have a river (and harbour) inside your city, and unwanted guests outside.

 

Jan

jan that would look very nice on my setup, thank you

[Kevin]

7 hours ago, popeye the sailor said:

you've made some great progress since I last looked in Kevin........your plans seem to be growing too     you got bit!

thank you, definitely been bitten

10 hours ago, Old Collingwood said:

I admire what you all do with these  stone buildings   - you are doing some really fine work Kevin  - your determination to keep challenging what you build  shows the range of talent you have my friend.

 

OC.

 

thank you OC

11 hours ago, Ekis said:

You are progressing very very fast on your project! Bravo ! 👋
Just one little thing: you should sand down each horizontal row of your walls before going up the next one to avoid the effects of waves on your buildings.

yes, the waves do look silly

[Kevin]

11 hours ago, Egilman said:

As far as the grade and sizing of blocks, remember, an old country church wouldn't have the level of expertise in stone masonry that the big cities would have, a simple stone cutter in the city would be a project manager or master builder in the country.....  When the church would order a monastery for a hamlet out in the boonies, they would send a stone cutter on a mission to get it built, it's how a stone cutter got promoted to stone setter/builder in the guild.....

 

The stones may look rough, but that is the way it was and lends an authenticity to the construction.... your solution to the different sized stones resembles many such fixes I've seen when I was studying medieval arch... The work was difficult and hard and they wouldn't tear down a half built stone wall to fix that kind of error..... They would adapt to the error and continue the build....

 

I think your doing fine, good work.... (understanding that there is a learning process going on as well)

 

EG

with comments like that, you are on my Christmas card list, thank you

[Kevin]

good evening everyone

Day 11 since change of scale

 

the Church of St Wilber the saint of lost model builders  continues

 

the windows are not had anything special done to then, just wanted to see how things could be done, and how things can be improved as i progress

the colour in the glass is from chocolate wrappers

 

3 openings still to be done on the tower,  a spire, door, arch way  and the roof  itself

i have no where to put this at present, so will put it on a base at a later date 

[Edwardkenway]

You've taken to this stone masons life like a duck to water Kevin, your church looks really good, archetypal of hundreds across England. 

Very nice work😁

[Kevin]

good evening everyone

 

day 13 since restart at 1/87 tower bricked, 

 

thank you for comments and like

 

well the roof went on, but far to early, i should have completed the tower before that, but instead i just cause more work for my self and carried on

tower is now fully bricked, the damage to the tower corner in the great storm of 1314 is evident

spire 50% complete, but dont know how im going to bring it to a point

 

[Kevin]

good evening everyone

 

day 14 roof and spire

 

can i have some honest opinions please,

 

i am not correcting the damage on the tower, the diorama will have a story to it, the gable ends and roof apex will be sorted tomorrow

 

 

Edited December 15, 2020 by Kevin

[Egilman]

24 minutes ago, Kevin said:

good evening everyone

 

day 14 roof and spire

 

can i have some honest opinions please,

 

i am not correcting the damage on the tower, the diorama will have a story to it, the gable ends and roof apex will be sorted tomorrow

Looks a lot like earthquake damage to me, a small chapel in the weeds..... I'm sure there has to be some history there somewhere.... Very interested in the story behind the building....

[Ekis]

I hadn't thought about it before, but the explanation of what one honestly thinks when looking at your church really corresponds to what Egilman wrote!
It really looks like this church was hit by an earthquake, and has been repaired as best it could be.
The stone bell tower is also something very rare, especially at a time when people were very careful about the weight of a roof on the building.
The window stiles of a single vertical stone is a bit out of scale, the lifting means of the time did not really allow for such large stones to be adjusted. Your frames, whether stone or wood, should be really well perpendicular. It reinforces the idea that everything has moved...

Finally, the flat stones over your support pillars could not hold up very long because of the cements which were not really like a glue, but more like a way to fill the gaps between horizontal stones. Moisture and frost would have had a destructive effect and would make them come off very quickly.

But overall, bravo for the construction and the speed of the site : your workers are much faster than mine ! 😁

[Kevin]

8 hours ago, Ekis said:

I hadn't thought about it before, but the explanation of what one honestly thinks when looking at your church really corresponds to what Egilman wrote!
It really looks like this church was hit by an earthquake, and has been repaired as best it could be.
The stone bell tower is also something very rare, especially at a time when people were very careful about the weight of a roof on the building.
The window stiles of a single vertical stone is a bit out of scale, the lifting means of the time did not really allow for such large stones to be adjusted. Your frames, whether stone or wood, should be really well perpendicular. It reinforces the idea that everything has moved...

Finally, the flat stones over your support pillars could not hold up very long because of the cements which were not really like a glue, but more like a way to fill the gaps between horizontal stones. Moisture and frost would have had a destructive effect and would make them come off very quickly.

But overall, bravo for the construction and the speed of the site : your workers are much faster than mine ! 😁

 

9 hours ago, Egilman said:

Looks a lot like earthquake damage to me, a small chapel in the weeds..... I'm sure there has to be some history there somewhere.... Very interested in the story behind the building....

Agreed, it  looks a bit naff in places, mainly the top 1/3  of the tower

 

i dont like the spire at all

so im thinking to remove it

take the tower off at roof apex height and rebuild it moving the openings up and leave it as a flat roof

 

 

[Edwardkenway]

33 minutes ago, Kevin said:

rebuild it moving the openings up and leave it as a flat roof

Will you put some crennalations on the tower if you take the spire off?

[Kevin]

1 hour ago, Edwardkenway said:

Will you put some crennalations on the tower if you take the spire off?

i joined a FB site medieval Buildings Group, and if i understand it right they might have been added at a much later date, But i am unsure about what date my village will be set in, 

[Egilman]

Well, you could just cap it with a hip type roof, that was common to most periods...... Especially away from the mainstream.....

[Ekis]

5 hours ago, Kevin said:

i joined a FB site medieval Buildings Group...

I wasn't really interested in FB groups for medieval construction, but thank you, Kevin, for pointing me to this place where people seem to be very interested.  👍

[popeye the sailor]

nice progress Kevin.......I think you should keep the spire the way it is.   it adds to the detail......a history angle is always good too   

[Waitoa]

Hi Kevin,

 

I actually like it as it is different to what I have normally seen and makes your build unique.  

 

Waitoa

[Kevin]

good morning everyone

 

i asked for honest opinions, so have taken the build back to try and sort the problems, i was quite happy with the church sides, the tower really bugged me, so at present the roof was removed and tower taken down, as for the spire, well you wont see that again

 

what i do like about this material, is that most of it is salvageable,, being ceramic stuck to paper with PVA glue the adhesive and paper dissolve in warm water leaving minimum clean up on the bricks which are reusable , lol depending how much they were sanded

 

what went wrong

the tower was ok up to the apex of the roof, with a combination of the apex and the bell window openings everything got bunched up, i started then to patch it up, hence the earthquake look

what i should have done was brick the tower separately

 

yes i do make work for my self, anyone who follows my logs know that, but, i dont want 15 fully built churches i want to try and get the first one looking better

lessons learnt (and yes all the same as boat building)

yes its a simple church, but still need to draw some basic scale plans, and don't add bits half way through

draw straight lines on the paper to keep bricks in line

look at photos to see how they were built

sand each layer, 

 

 

Edited December 17, 2020 by Kevin

[Waitoa]

1 hour ago, Kevin said:

draw straight lines on the paper to keep bricks in line

Well you will be one step ahead of me if you do this

[Egilman]

3 hours ago, Kevin said:

lessons learnt (and yes all the same as boat building)

yes its a simple church, but still need to draw some basic scale plans, and don't add bits half way through

draw straight lines on the paper to keep bricks in line

look at photos to see how they were built

sand each layer, 

Yep, document and study, only execute when your comfortable with what your trying to accomplish......

 

Sometimes, the research and learning about the subject part is more fun than the building......

[Old Collingwood]

How about making the Bell Tower  square?   I have seen a few of those  even our old village tower was square,   that should help with the brick works.

 

OC.

[king derelict]

For things like the spire the 10 x 6 x 1.5 mmm tiles sometimes work better. It's easier to bring things to a point. The Rochelle towers are mostly built with These tiles and they have their own problems. Larger variation in size, distortion and need more tinkering but you can get sharp triangular shapes etc. I did like the spire but have no idea on historical context

[Old Collingwood]

One of my old pics  Kevin   - like this I mean  - 

 

OC.