Gregor's Arch

The photograph below was taken today, and shows how the recladding of the north and west walls of the Great Hall is progressing. You have to realise that all the plaster was lost on these walls, so the only clues as to the internal appearance are the original plans, and the surviving plasterwork on the south and east walls.

Great Hall today

In the top right of the image above is Gregor's first ever Gothic arch. :-) He cut the shape first out of oriented strand board (OSB) and then out of plasterboard. He was originally going to cut a circular arch, until I pointed out that there was a subtle but distinct point to the arch, which became even clearer once we dug out the original plans (see below).

original plans for north wall

Gregor instructed me to mock up the shape, but before I could even begin, he had bent another piece of plasterboard to form a curve, and had traced along this with a pencil. Amazingly enough, Gregor got the shape pretty spot on, even before he had seen the original plans. I told him, that he had morphed into a Gothic architect. :-)

There is a fancy horizontal moulding running round the Great Hall at two levels. It arcs over the windows, but we could not work out what this did between the windows on the north wall because the windows are so close together. The mystery was solved by the original plans where you can see the moulding in a "Y" configuration, that appears nowhere else in the room.

The arches at Balintore are closer to the Tudor arch rather than the more traditional Lancet arch, that most people associate with Gothic architecture. However, writing this blog article makes me realise that the Balintore arch is actually a Four-centred arch, used widely in Islamic architecture. The Tudor arch is a sometimes considered a type of Four-centred arch, but strictly speaking this is incorrect.

arch types

And the last picture shows the "before" prior to any wall strapping or plaster boarding. Gregor and his brother Gavin are literally climbing the walls, and hoisting up buckets of supplies using a rope from ground level in the best tradition of mediaeval builders.
 

Great Hall before strapping