LEAD HILL — The word “castle” conjures up images of dashing knights, fair maidens and court jesters.
Maybe dragons.
What might not come to mind is the simple fact that building castles was hard work. It still is, as a select few in the Ozark Mountains are discovering.
The Ozark Medieval Fortress is a giant, living history lesson, sitting in a clearing in the hills northeast of Harrison.
But it has its roots in France.
Project chairman Michel Guyot of Saint-Fargeau, France, has a bit of experience with castles.
“I dreamed of castles as a little boy building them in the sand,” he says. “Then I spent my summers as an adolescent working on restoration projects. I went on as a young adult to purchase my first castle and restore it. But I alwayswondered what it would have been like in medieval times - to really construct these giants.”
In 1997, Guyot decided to try building a medieval castle from the ground up. He named the project, still under construction in the Burgundy region of France, Guedelon.
Jean Marc and Solange Mirat, a French couple whoretired to Arkansas in 1990, visited Guedelon in 2008 and thought their property in the Ozarks would be perfect for a similar project. Upon receiving their letter, Guyot decided to visit the site in the hopes of bringing “a project like this to an area where people do not have the chance to be exposed to medieval architecture on a daily basis like they do in Europe.”
So, the Ozark Medieval Fortress LLC was formed, with 17 founding partners, most of them French.
It sounds a bit odd, a tad incongruous. A medieval castle in the Ozarks?
But it fits surprisingly well.
For now, the castle is isolated, set on a hillside looking out over the rolling Ozarks. Except for the occasional airplane flying over, you might be back in the Middle Ages, looking out at the European countryside.
General manager and founding partner JulieSonveau, who is originally from Kansas, says some people have asked “Why not do this in Branson?” - closer to other attractions, hotels and restaurants.
“They don’t get it,” she says.
No, they don’t.
Guyot claims, “When I first saw the hillside I thought of how much it resembled the countryside in France.”
GOING BACK IN TIME
At the site, a cool walk through the trees takes the visitor back in time, the only sounds from birds, crickets, and the occasional clang of metal on stone.
The walking trail winds through the forest, through a small-scale motte-and-bailey wooden castle - precursor of the larger stone structures that followed - past a textiles shop and a rough wooden pen with hand-shorn sheep grazing away.
A little farther on is the quarry where men are hard at work, breaking rocks one at a time with hand tools.
The broken stones are loaded on a horse-drawn cart and taken farther down the road to one of the state’s biggest history projects: the stone castle.
Guyot says the building site had a special added incentive. “Of course Arkansas being an area with lots of stone is very appealing to me.”
In choosing a site for a castle, access to stone, wood, water and sand are very important. The castle site has plenty of all four.
At the quarry, parts of the mountain have already been blasted away, with clean rock face exposed. The workers break the rocks along the vein with medieval hand tools - literally. The instrument local resident Cody Hanna uses in his rock-busting work was found in the walls of a medieval castle in France.
The fortress site is on a natural bedrock foundation in a broad clearing. Nearly a year into the building, it’s beginning to take shape. The walls are low, but they’re there to see. The seven towers (one of which will eventually be 70 feet tall) are starting to appear. One has gotten tall enough that it already has a doorway and arrow slits.
It is projected that it will take 20 years to complete this 13th-century stone castle, but it’s not the finished product that’s the point. It’s the journey.
Men in tunics and straw hats are hard at work, mixing mortar from lime, water and sand, hefting rocks and fitting them into place - wall-building is a bit like a jigsaw puzzle. There are usually about 18 workers on-site at any given time.
The builders aren’t doing this the easy way or the modern way. Except when safety regulations and public building codes get in the way, they are using all 13th-century methods.
In anticipation of the day when the walls get too high for the men to easily lift the rocks by hand, they’ve built a giant hamster wheel. One man walking inside the wheel can lift up to 10 times his body weight on the attached crane and platform.
All around the fortress are the necessary artisans.
Need a rope? Talk to the rope maker. When stone carver Franck Falgairette needs a new tool for chipping away at the rocks sent over from the quarry, the blacksmith has to make one.
The potter is busy making water vessels and building a kiln, firing the bricks in a crude campfire. When the castle is standing, the pottery shop will produce tiles for the roof.
AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN
The end result will be both European and American - European in style, American in resources and materials.
The fortress is what the staff refer to as an “ edutraction,” says Sonveau. As the website says, “The scientific objective of Ozark Medieval Fortress is to build it in order to understand it.”
A scientific team studies and evaluates each step of construction, with European experts giving guidance and instruction.
It’s a learning process - for the visitors as well as the workers. Learning how to properly build the walls. Learning that a crossbow is far more effective than a longbow when shooting arrows through a castle’s arrow slits.
School groups are welcome at the castle, and young visitors can try their hands at feeding the sheep or making ropes and pots.
It’s not just a walk-andlook attraction. Guests are expected and encouraged to ask questions and the workers are happy to explain what they’re doing, take a turn demonstrating the hamster wheel or pose in the stocks for a photo.
Sonveau stresses that they’re encouraging people to come now, early in the process. Because the site is still relatively new and intimate, visitors can have plenty of one-on-one time with the staff and get the most out of a visit.
Visiting every few years, people can gradually watch the site evolve and feel a stake in what’s happening.
As the castle grows, so will the attraction. They plan to add more artisans and continue with the armor and archery demonstrations that have already started. There will also be professional information signs, a games area, full-scale catapults and, eventually, an on-site restaurant.
There’s been a great deal of interest in the castle, the only project of its kind in America, drawing artisans, history enthusiasts and the just plain curious. Applications for internships, jobs and volunteer work have come in from across the country, and right here at home.
The workers who are there seem genuinely enthusiastic about their task and sharing their knowledge. After all, they’re part of a select club. There aren’t many people in the world who can say they’ve helped build a 13th-century fortress.
After a few years, Sonveau points out, the project’s workers will all be experts on medieval castle construction.
“You can’t get this out of a book,” she says.
Cody Hanna built houses until the downturn in the market. Now, he’s proud of his role breaking rocks in the quarry.
“It’s part of history and that’s something to be a part of,” he explains.
The Ozark Medieval Fortress is at 1671 Arkansas 14 W. near Lead Hill. The site is open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday through Nov. 21. It will shut down Nov. 21 and reopen in March. Admission is $12, $8 for children 6-16. Visit
ozarkmedievalfortress.com
or call (870) 436-7625.
Travel, Pages 60 on 10/17/2010