Wednesday 30 January 2013

3D Jigsaw

Many years ago, I decided NOT to take on the restoration of Balintore Castle. The main reason was the collapsed oriel window: this was far too expensive a reconstruction to undertake.

Many years later, with good intentions and common sense thrown out the window (proverbial rather than oriel :-), phase one of the reconstruction of this 3D jigsaw puzzle begins, namely cataloguing the stone blocks and moving these on to palettes, as requested by Angus Council. Despite the recent snowy weather, the man with a "tele-handler" and my builder managed to fit in one day of this. Good progress was made, and currently we expect one more day should complete the task.

The two collapsed vertical stacks of masonry have been labelled "L" and "R" and then the massive stone blocks have been further categorised by number. These stacks have been dubbed "the twin towers", but not, I should add, by me.

There has been some fantastic news for Kirriemuir, which is the nearest town to Balintore Castle. Through the efforts of Angus Council, it has been awarded £600k to improve properties in its incredibly picturesque, but somewhat run down, conservation area. Through the ongoing work at Balintore, I hope along with Kirriemuir to "raise the tone" of the neighbourhood. :-)



"the twin towers"




initial paletting by tele-handler



collapsed masonry more than half cleared :-)

5 comments:

  1. Impressive! I knew moving those stones would require heavy machinery.

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    1. Not only that but my builder's back is now killing him! There has been a second day of stone moving now, The task was not quite finished as a bucket attachment got bent, but we are almost there now.

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  2. Hi David, is it possible to get in mailcontact with you? I have a few questions about using Balitone Castle for my new novel. Hope to read you soon! Sandra

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  3. Hi Sandra, are you on Facebook? If so you can find me as "MrBalintore" there and we can swap contacts.

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  4. Hi David! Yes, I´m! I allready sent you a message on Facebook :-). S.

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