Tithe barns, manors, abbeys and a work-shop
for carpenters at Château de Gaillon

Gaillon and its Chateau, situated about 40 km south of Rouen in Normandy, has been the place where 50 carpenters from all over the world met each other. In the course of a workshop from May 25th to June 2nd 2013 all participants aimed for the reconstruction of the roof of the castle tower.

This Chateau is regarded to be one of the first buildings constructed in the style of Renaissance in France. Work on the building started in 1502 and was finished in 1508. Georges d’ Amboise the bishop of Rouen and prime minister of Louis XII was the principal. But there is little left from its former splendour. In 1764 most of the building was devastated by a fire. Although it has been restored after that it was devastated again in 1790 in the course of the French Revolution. After that vandalism and the disposal of the Chateau to a farmer in 1834 did further harm to the building. Nowadays the Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles de Haute-Normandie tries to restore it step by step. The carpentry workshop will contribute to that, trying to use only techniques which were usually applied on building-site up to a hundred years ago without using modern tools and machinery. The whole report of our journey can be found at: www.hausforscher.de

Concurrently we were able to continue our work on building research and dendrochronological age determination at a couple of sites with the aid of Dr. Francois Calame, ethnologist at the regional administration of Haute-Normandie and Pierre Roussel, president of the association Amis des Monuments et Sites de l’Eure. Research on the great barns (Granges) of monastic or noble facilities still stays in focus of our interest. First results of the analysis are available now, further are following and will be published step by step on these pages.