Dan Snow's History Hit - A History of Building Britain

Episode Date: May 30, 2020

I was thrilled to be joined by Andrew Ziminski, a stonemason living and working in Somerset. He's just released his first book documenting the fascinating stories from three decades of hands-on experience working with the very building blocks of British history. In this episode, I heard about his work on a Stonehenge megalith, the restoration of Roman ruins in Bath, the stories of engine houses, mills and aqueducts of the Industrial Revolution, the problems facing Notre Dame, how St Paul's Cathedral is really a piece of Arabic architecture, and the wealth of history to be found in a humble medieval country church. Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History It. I hope you've been enjoying the week of Dunkirk anniversary commemoration shows. I'm so sad that I'm not going to be sailing with the little ships, the surviving little ships, over to Dunkirk this year from Ramsgate. It was a highlight five years ago and ten years ago. Man, I'm getting old. We're doing these commemorations for the second or third time around. We will be doing it again next year. Please check out the documentaries, both about the fall of France and Dunkirk on History Hit TV. It's like Netflix for history. You just go on there, you listen to all the back episodes of this podcast, you watch hundreds of documentaries,

and you stay busy during this lockdown. You're going to love it. Use the code POD1, P-O-D-1. You get the first month for free and the second month for just one pound, dollar, euro, whatever you're paying in. Taiwanese dollars, probably. And so it's super cheap. In the meantime, though, you might want to listen to this podcast with Andrew Zeminski.

He is a very interesting person that I came across the other day. He's a stonemason and he's written a history of Britain through stonemasonry, through the buildings that he's worked on. He's worked on buildings, structures, where his forebears, his predecessors, stonemasons that actually built the original structures, did so well over a thousand years ago. In some cases even longer because he's worked on Stonehenge. It is a completely different way of looking at history through the things that he discovers by looking at those marks that were left by his predecessors. And it turns out, obviously, I guess, that you can learn a huge amount about those societies, about those people, by getting up close and personal with the stone and the masonry they've left behind.

So this is great fun. Hope you enjoy it. Please subscribe to History Hit TV. In the meantime, enjoy Andrew Zeminski. Andrew Zeminski. Andrew, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I don't think I've ever had anyone talk about the history of Britain from this point of view before. Explain your unique point of view. Well, for the past 30 years, I've been working on churches, cathedrals, listed buildings, ancient monuments, and I sort of feel like spending so much time ingrained with history just gives me a unique perspective that perhaps academics don't normally have.

Doing the restoration work, are you the first person that might have touched these objects or restored them in how many years? Generations or centuries? For example, a bridge that we worked on, a medieval bridge, hasn't been touched since it was put up in about 1330 1340 you know we would pull the stones out because it was just a pack horse bridge there

was no vehicular traffic so no need to improve it and we'd find the original clay there because the stones are mortared together with clay which indicated that the victorians hadn't got in there and filled it full of cement and all that sort of thing. So quite often I can be the first person to have touched something for a long, long time. What does that teach you? Do you feel that you can see the original craftsmanship of your predecessor all those years ago? Oh yeah, totally. I was just thinking about this recently with the anniversary of the laying of the first stone at Salisbury Cathedral. I did a lot of work there, did a lot of training there in my early days.

And in the cloisters, when we were opening up there, we found all these rejects and caustic tiles and they had a bit of a fault with them. So that was just sort of ballast in the middle of the wall. But you could see all the fingerprints of the potter who put it together on the back in the clay. Literally, it'd come out the kiln, the potter would go, nah, that's a the clay. Literally, it'd come out the kiln, the potter would go,

no, that's a load of rubbish, and the masons can have that. So, yeah, all the time I'm finding interesting and odd things. I always think of you guys working on medieval buildings, but presumably there's a huge range. Yeah, well, I've worked to consolidate Roman villas. I've done a lot of work in the Roman baths in Bath, which was a real career highlight for me because it was reconstructing the Gorgon pediment temple facade. So you know nice to get

to grips with the setting out techniques of Roman Masons and their craft as well. I mean it was very apparent how they approached the particular projects there like with respect to the carving and like I say the setting out as well do you know the gorgon pediment it's a big old pediment classical building but the difference is it's been cut by gauls or celts and in the middle is this conflation of two deities there's the gorgon's head which we're all familiar with but that's been conflated with the local deity that looked after the hot springs in bath so it's basically uh serpents swarming around the head of this gorgon. But at the centre of his nose, for he is a he, there's a little dimple.

And that is the point where the mason would have used his or her compasses to set out the whole composition. And no one had really noticed that before. So that was a nice thing to encounter. and no one had really noticed that before, so that was a nice thing to encounter. So as a mason, do you have argy-bargy with academics because they come in thinking they know what they're talking about and you can correct them and say, I'm on the coalface here? Well, we're sort of kept away from academics,

but we have argy-bargies with architects. Friendly stuff, though. Of course it is. You've done a lot of work on Stonehenge, which must be extraordinary. I haven't actually worked on Stonehenge. I did build a mock-up megalith of a Sarsen stone in our workshop, and I was very interested in how the stone was dressed. There's one stone in particular at Stonehenge, number 56, which is on the main sort of alignment.

It's one of the trilithons, its twin has fallen and the lintel is on the ground. And the face of that's been worked perfectly flush and it's got corners so it's a really extraordinary piece of work by folk who just used things called mauls rounded stones to pound away on the surface and on midsummer eve as the sun goes down you can cast an eye down that the line of that stone and see the sun set on a marker stone just outside the hinge so it's still doing its job as a scientific instrument it was designed to do four and a half five thousand years ago mind bending and by making that in your own workshop what do you think that

taught you about the tools the methods the sophistication of those peoples who lived so long ago first of all these people weren't masons, they were carpenters. And there were some proto-monuments up on somewhere called Durrington Walls, just outside of Stonehenge. And there the theory is that they honed their skills to create Stonehenge. So all the joints that keep the monument together are carpentry joints, so tongue-grooved, mortise and tenon joints, that sort of thing. But in recreating a standing megalith in my yard what I discovered was the huge

quantities of dust that I was creating and sarsen is made of a particular type of stone, sandstone, so it's sand cemented with silica and this dust will kill you very quickly. Silicosis is a really bad disease. And even today, one of the first things you're taught is to wear full PPE. So prehistoric people would have been pounding away family units working this stone, and they just couldn't have lived very long after. So I was very interested to establish that. And you don't think about that, because it's a beautiful monument, but many, many people will have died creating it. Stonehenge is the foremost archaeological monument in Europe. It was built with architecture in mind

and it's the same with mortars and tenon joints. Before that and after that, standing stones weren't dressed. They were just put up and created as a circle or an alignment. But Stonehenge was put together, as I said, with architecture in mind. Tell me a little bit, stonemasons, whenever I'm looking at medieval subjects, stonemasons seem to me quite highly prized by Edward I when he's building his castles in Wales. Was it a pretty distinguished job, do you think? Well, there's a clear pecking order, as i think there is today

you know you have the laborers at the bottom mixing the mortar carrying the stones up onto the scaffold then you have the fixer masons that's more what i do i'm a fixer mason and a conservator so i like to conserve as much original material as possible in situ and then you'd have the carvers and then you would go up to the sculptors so once you'd gone through all those stages you could then become a master mason and a master mason was the absolute pinnacle of the working labouring classes at that time I mean some master masons were running four or five cathedral jobs at one time travelling around so you know they were very well paid and very well considered you're working

on buildings the entire length of british history what are the big moments was it a sort of gentle evolution or are there big jumps ahead in terms of our ability to shape stone with the romanesque period after the conquest it's like something radioactive grips the. Cathedrals sprung up all over the place. Like a Russian spring. It just turned up everywhere. It's absolutely extraordinary. Like with where did the Masons go that built Stonehenge? Why are there not Stonehenges all over Europe? Where did all these Masons come from to build all the cathedrals?

You think of every single medieval cathedral was established at that time. So just after that, with the advent of the Gothic movement, during the Crusades, when Arabic technology was being employed, that's when the game really changed. And walls went higher, bigger windows, flying buttresses, the cathedrals we're familiar with today. That all came from the knowledge of Arabic engineers and technology. And you can see that, can all came from the knowledge of Arabic engineers and technology. And you can see that, can you, in the buildings? I mean, the minute you're loose on a towering steeple or a tower, can you tell instantly what stage we're at of our evolution?

I can read and undress a building pretty quickly. And that's common to most building crafts people who specialise in traditional buildings. But I'm particularly interested in the influence of Islam in Gothic architecture. I mean, Sir Christopher Wren, when he built St Paul's, he was hugely influenced by what he referred to as Saracenic architecture. And if you look at St Paul's, well, what do you see?

You see a big dome and a pair of minarets out the front. And he's also using this Gothic architecture behind the scenes, but it's all disguised. I've never thought about St Paul's as a sort of homage to Eastern architecture before. Is that controversial? I mean, that's extraordinary. I look up from Fleet Street and I think, yeah, there's a mosque, there's a dome and a pair of minarets.

So, like I say, Wren was hugely influenced by Islam. It's well documented and well recorded, but I don't know how recognised that is or has been. And what about castles? Is that the same, obviously, with castle technology? There was an old theory, which was that these crusaders saw castles in the Holy Land and brought that sort of technology back to Western Europe. Is that something that has survived? Are you interested in castles? You know, I'm absolutely fascinated by the Welsh border castles. And I'll talk about one in my book, Carrikenon in West Wales, which basically, if you want to see a Crusader era Saracen castle, go to Wales. You know, the architecture has been

freely stolen from that part of the world. Is there a difference in the buildings? I mean, are castles easier to work on because their features are perhaps more utilitarian, they're designed for defence, and whereas these Romanesque cathedrals are sort of more ornate? Are there certain buildings from that period that are harder to work on? So, I mean, castles are designed not to fall down unless they are slighted. So, you know, Corfe Castle, we're all familiar with the gatehouses that have been blown up during the Civil War, and they tumumbled down the hill a little bit, but they're still complete. So working on structures like that is fairly straightforward considering what you have to deal with when working on a cathedral.

So the moment you start to work on a flying buttress of a cathedral that's supporting a whole wall, you've got to think about the engineering dynamics and the knock-on effects of the work that you're undertaking. So you can see a Notre Dame with all the wooden supports they've put in underneath the flying buttresses and other details we'd like to get stuck into Notre Dame is that the biggest story in the world at the moment for you guys I think it's a bit above my pay grade unfortunately but I think the problems that they have there are manifold and the main one is the rapid cooling of the stone after the fire by water and if limestone that is what notre dame is built

from if limestone is heated up to eight nine hundred thousand degrees and then cooled rapidly basically the surface turns into lime mortar and it disintegrates and that's my great fear with the vaulting there if the vaulting has been compromised and has lost its fabric its core if you like then it's sunk it's going nowhere and it's not going to take five years to repair i mean in the olden days fire was a really common eventuality and cathedrals in particular were built with that in mind so roof fires in particular were common so what would happen there'd be a lightning strike or whatever or the plumbers would be on the roof doing their lead work they'd have their coals up there perhaps some coals would tumble off there'd be a roof fire but the roof would just burn through

from one end to the other and then that that would be it. They just simply brush it away, put a new roof on. And the stone vault over the nave was constructed to protect and to allow the cathedral to stay up. But because of modern firefighting technologies, you know, it's filled with water, it's changed the chemical makeup of the stone. They've got problems. problems god that's depressing i didn't realize that well thank you very much what's your favorite place to work in the uk i like the chance discovery of country churches country churches are our great art repository and the collection of people that go with them is interesting as well so i'm always going out into the somerset levels and the wiltshire downs and down to the Dorset coast and just you know

spending a couple of weeks doing some maintenance work on small churches and that's what I love more than anything really just don't know what you're going to find. Can I just ask a question that people often ask me about some things like HMS Victory because if the wood's all been replaced is it still HMS Victory how do you feel about that is a church you've extensively restored refurbished is that actually now just a 21st century church or is the essence of that original Saxon nave so is that preserved? Valid question that so I'm a fixer and a conservator and a carver so my job is to maintain the maximum amount of original fabric as possible so that even goes down to the mortar that's used. We really try to replace as little as possible and there are various conservation

techniques where we use lime mortar which is a very traditional way of handling these issues. The big problem was over restoration by Victorians for medieval churches and cathedrals and the introduction of modern materials so that could be cast iron and modern cements. I spent a lot of my time unpicking Victorian interventions and reintroducing a more authentic method of repair. So we worked on a complete Saxon building in Bradford-on-Avon built in in the 10th century. That, like the bridge, not so very far away, was really interesting because the stones there were glued together with clay. There was no lime used at all. And the Victorians hadn't really got to it because they hadn't recognised its value. It was just another sort of building in the town.

So, you know, on projects like that, we just keep it as authentic as possible. And you do feel the soul of the building. I don't mind, you know, when I visit even a Japanese castle that was basically destroyed during the war and has been rebuilt, I find something of the essence of the place survives. Yeah, I agree there. Churches, bridges, vaulting, that's my expertise. And, you know, you can see if a Victorian's overindulged. But, for example, down at Sherbourne Abbey,

that's known as the Cathedral of Dorset the Romanesque vaults came crashing down after a fire in the 15th century and the master mason there reintroduced a perpendicular vault to fit perfectly within the area set out by the previous style of architecture the essence of the place is very strong and the vaulting at Sherbourne is some of the best vaulting we have in the country by virtue of the material used and the way it's been set out. I mean it's on a par to anything in northern Europe at that time. And it must be wonderful, you started at the beginning, but you must have memories of just lifting up particular parts and finding unexpected things. You mention those in

the book. What are one or two of your highlights? I've worked at a lot of churches in Bristol that survived the Bristol Blitz. One had an unexploded incendiary bomb that we found in the roof space that just dropped through, you know, a sort of truncheon-sized bomb that dropped on a parachute that hadn't gone off. So that and James's Priory wouldn't be here today if that had done its job but also we did a tower repair project on the Somerset Church at Chedsey just outside of Bridgewater and the south face of the tower is absolutely full of soft lead musket balls stuck in the joints and in the stones from the Battle of Sedgemoor which had happened all around there the small battle large skirmish. Yeah, so, you know, that's just war stuff.

But like I was saying about the finding in caustic tiles, fossils is really common, especially as I'm working a piece of blue lye slimestone. You know, I've got an ichthyosaur shoulder blade. I've got it here. I've got an ichthyosaur shoulder blade that, you know, split a stone. The Zimsonian is quite an interesting small museum. The Zimsonian.

Well, I'll have to do a live stream one day and you can show me around the Zimsonian. Thank you so much. That was really interesting. Andrew, can you tell me what the name of the book is? The book is called The Stone Mason, A History of Building Britain, published by John Murray's great reviews. Well, storming reviews. Thank you very much

for coming on the podcast. I really appreciate it. Good luck with it all. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Just before you go, a bit of a favour to ask. I totally understand if you don't want to become

a subscriber or pay me any cash money, makes sense. But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review, I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather, the law of the jungle out there, and I need all the fire support I can get. So that will boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome, but if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you.