I believe you got that number from Beaumaris, which dwarfs anything on Harn (with the exception of the city walls, which were likely built over decades, and Burzyn, which was clearly based on Beaumaris and has been the subject of considerable derision on this board already.) That castle required "400 masons", and a long list of relatively unskilled laborers. Any projects on Harn (other than Burzyn) clearly would require only a fraction of that number.

And there is no shortage of masons. Other than the bonded masons used for maintenance, I would not expect to see any masons in any of the city or castle publications. Masons are peripatetic men - they move from job to job and keep no permanent offices.

That is, by the way, why we have "Freemasons" today - being the traveled types that they were, and also having a strong international community, it was easy to believe that they had secret knowledge. The founders of Freemasonry appropriated that reputation by implying the connection. (Or maybe modern Freemasonry did evolve from the real mason organizations, like they claim. It's possible.)

So we have no census available for the masons of Harn. A quick survey of construction projects currently active doesn't indicate that all that many are needed at the moment. If 400 were enough for Beaumaris (and that number would include apprentices and journeymen, I think), then the total number employed on Harn has to be within an order of magnitude of that - fewer than a 1000, for sure. That's hardly out of line.

Castlemike wrote:



Good point. A regular army can become a workforce in times of peace, as with Rome. You might have some skilled engineers a spart of the army as well.

Pokep wrote:



Dover Castle actually. And this was during the initital period of the construction - It was enlarged at a later date.

Pokep wrote:



I already conceded that -

I wrote:



Burzyn being an exception of course. But your standard Harnic Castle would probably take a good 700 employees working on it, maybe 100 as Masons. And let us not forget even keeps and fortified stone manorhouses - maybe 1/2 to one 1/4 of the number for a keep, and I'd think even a fortified stone manor would take 1/10th of that.

And IIRC, even with this large labor force, Dover took 10 years to complete.

Figure 900d per day for a castle, plus the cost of the "leaders" or masters in charge of the program. 1000d per day would make sense. And you are likely going to feed and house these people, the accomodations would not be sufficient locally. I'd guess that paying going wages plus food and housing would be the norm for this type of relocation job.

And yes, I'd agree Journeymen could be included in the masons, though apprentices would not be that skilled and mostly young boys - I'd factor them more into the unskilled workforce.

The combination of costs and logisitics of manpower would make building such structures tough. One of the reasons the Early Saxons small knigdoms may not have had stone fortresses for the most part, reserving stone for churches is that they may have not had the resources to justify such a building project. I don't know, just a thought.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

My own economic model puts the masonry and marble "industry" at about .25% of the overall economy, which would imply that something like 600-800 journeymen and masters. That's obviously a very rough number, but it is clearly sufficient to manage the projects that we see around Harn. If you imagine about half are bonded master doing maintenance, then there are 300-400 traveling around. That seems about right, considering the projects that are currently going on. (And I would concede without the slightest argument that there might be as many as twice that number.)

The fact that Harn is underpopulated really doesn't matter, and in fact may work to the advantage of the castle builders. What matters is productivity. In an underpopulated realm agricultural production is more productive, since only the best land needs to be utilized. This frees more labor towards other tasks, such as castle building. As population reaches the carrying capacity of the land, productivity diminishes and impoverishes the region. We don't see this much in Medieval Europe, but we do see it in the Classical Mediterranean.

Most of us on the board agree that Burzyn is too.damn.big for Harn. But subtracting that, there seems to be enough labor available to build what we see.

I feel compelled to point out that this is one example of how the site-based articles throw off our understanding of Harnic society. The city and location articles ignore the surprisingly large role of transhumance in the Harnic economy. History in general always undercounts the peripatetic, and it is hard to estimate just how many migrants there are. But that number is much, much larger than most of us imagine. Consider this - the Beaumaris Castle mentioned as an example was built in Beaumaris - quite a ways from, well, anything! (Well, Bangor, for what that was worth.) The laborers mentioned on that project were surely brought in from some distance - and the same kinds of people that traveled to Anglesey to build Beaumaris surely exist on Harn as well. Unfortunately, they simply don't show up in the kingdom and town descriptions.

LOL, Pokep, I was using a combination of info from both Beaumaria and Dover castle, initially I thought it was strctly about Dover

Amyway, Dover took 10 years to build, Beaumaris was worked on for 35 years and was still not entirely finished when money and materials temporarily ran out, and Edwards attention was diverted to Scotland.



This fits middle ages europe pretty well also. Harn though seems to have manors on pretty poor soils - though they stay away from bring down many of the forests, which could be very good land, just a lot of outlay initially. Europe during it's growth period from the 10th-13th centuries put a lot of prior forest under plough.

But Burzyn - that's 2600 people working for 35 years or so

But the other thing in addition to manpower is cost.

Lets's go with work being done 240 days of the year on a castle @ 1,000d per day.

Thats 240,000d per year, from an Earl if not a royal castle for labor of builders only. Plus materials, plus food, etc. etc. And a good 10 years plus spending this kind of money.

I'd think a wooden motte and bailey keep could be put up with less than 20% of the resoources spent on a stone construction, if not less.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

I have an article somewhere of just what could be achieved in respect to a timber castle. Keep meaning to dig it out. My current rush seems to be slackening off a bit. May be I can find the time to try and look it out again.

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"You're gonna cut off the Dragon's what?"

That would be interesting Rich. I was thinking kind of the Norman Wooden Motte and Bailey. I like to use that as a model for Hanric Keeps.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

Hi all,

Beaumaris had a very large work force (like all of Edward I's ring of castles around Wales) because he wanted to build the castles in an extremely short time (less than 10 years). Most castles were built at a much slower rate (over generations).

I think a much better analogy is Guedelon Castle, which is being built today in France, using only medieval techniques and equipment. It is being built by a team of just 50 workers of which only a handful are actual masons.

You can see the site here:

http://www.guedelon.fr/en/

And the timeline here:

http://www.guedelon.fr/en/the-construct ... 03_05.html

Having visited the site, I can tell you, it looks EXACTLY like a medieval castle. It is slightly later in time period (1400AD +/-) but there is no significant change in technique or technology in the construction methodology.

Anyway, just something for you to consider in your discussions.

TTYL

- Kerry

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Well, my days of taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle. - Mal, Firefly.

Very nice and I agree most were built slowly over decades and generations because they were so expensive to build. Seem to be expanding on building the basic keep and tower design.

Seems like it's being built at a former quarry though which does minimize the labor and infrastructure support requirements [Food, Shelter and Supplies (Looks like they started in the middle of a forest/woodland setting which probably would not normally be the case for most castles so less readily accessible source of stone and timber (Most castles also had a strategic military basis for existences besides a public display of power) which would require additional people and transport resources to the site)].

Most of those workers probably do not live on site driving to and from home each day (Minimizing needed shelter and food requirements for the workers (breakfast and dinner at home)).

Some bring a lunch, others drive to get a bite to eat or they have a lunch truck or caterer drop by (Minimizing those laborers and their food and shelter requirements).

A thought occurred as I was waking up this morning. What about the city walls? They're quite extensive in most cases. Must have taken either a fairly substantial workforce or a considerable amount of time to construct them.

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"You're gonna cut off the Dragon's what?"

Ah yes. But my point is just how big is a Motte and Bailey anyway?

I am looking... Do you think that it's possible to have too many books on one subject?
Nah. Don't be stupid Rich. They're just not catalogued properly. Carry on looking.

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"You're gonna cut off the Dragon's what?"

Interesting.



Can be a variety of sizes. For simpicity sake, I was looking at Harnci castles as stone, keeps as wood motte and bailey types.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

Think I found the article I was looking for.

It was about a book on Timber Castles by Robert Higham and Philip Barker. One of the extensive Timber castles they discuss is Stafford Castle. I can't post the reconstructions because of copyright but you can see a couple here.

Based on them and others from the book, this is a sketch plan at Harn local scale.

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"You're gonna cut off the Dragon's what?"

Very good Rich, that's how I see many Harnic Castles as.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

Another thought here, yeah, they cost a fortune to build, not to mention using a metric tonne of building materials that may or may not be hard to get, depending on local resources/neighbours interest in actually letting you complete it. They also use a lot of the nobles work-force, thus leaving fields untended (unless you pay for "foreigners") I dont think anyone disputes this. Not to mention you need permission (royal grant to start building it at all) which is no easy feat, at least not in canon Kaldor if I read it right.

All that aside though, once you've actually finished that, you're hardly likely to put one yeoman in it, there will have to be some serious manpower to protect your lives work too no?

Using Caer Gardiren as an example here (its imo a proper castle) the canon article lists the following military personnel:
20 light foot (30d/man and month=600d)
10 medium foot castle guard (60d/man and month=600d)
10 longbowmen (80d/man and month=800d)
5 medium horse (300d/man and month=1500d)

Thats a whopping 3500d per month just for the guards of your newly built castle, though ofc, thats also an earl, so maybe go cheap and skip the 5 medium horse (elite knight unit of bodyguards)

Yeah, cant see overly many with enough income to support a castle, even if they could scrape together the funds to build it.

Now... give the crown a powerful, hostile neighbour, and Im sure there would be a few building-projects started!

Interesting stuff though, my only point in all the rambling was that its not nearly done or cheap just because the castle itself is eventually completed

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No remorse for the past!

All true. I suppose my point throughout has been that I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the Manors on the Rethem Kanday border resembled Motte and Bailey castles or Ringworks.

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"You're gonna cut off the Dragon's what?"