Salisbury is also famous for having as its foundations a raft of logs sunk into the water loogged ground.
Hard to be critical when it worked until big cracks started to appear in the 20th Century and a diver spent some years replacing it all section by section with concrete.
(By the way, I like the Sage a lot more than I like the tower block behind it, though I am not agreat fan of Sir Norman Foster's other "Gherkin", Reichstag dome etc.)
The keeping of secrets, a masonic code etc. is possibly the cause of more lost skills than anything else. The Romans knew how to use concrete and cement yet this was lost for centuries after the collapse of the empire.
However, lime mortar, which served in its place, has its advantages... since the core of a castles walls would be rubble and lime mortar, the lime mortar had an important advantage over the Roman materials... it acted like a jelly when struck by a stone from a catapult.
Also, and you can see this in old buildings where the foundations have sagged or the building settled, the fact that lime mortar never actually sets means that it yields and adapts where modern cements would crack and the structure fail.
Stone is/was difficult to work with the available tools yet some stone is easier to work when fresh from the quarry and still "green" i.e. with the quarry sap still in it... i.e. moisture. Once cut and errected the moisture would escape through the open air surface and the minerals dissolved in it would be carried to the surface and form a crust as the moisture evaporated. A good natural protection until the advent of modern air borne pollutants.
Its perhaps why the Towere Of London was built (faced) with Reigate sandstone which is now in trouble.
Builders could and would work to the limits of their capabilities, the available technology and the available materials.
Some cathedrals took so long to build that the advances in knowledge are evident in their structure; the transition from the norman arch and huge columns at lower levels, to the gothic pointed arch and light delicate columns and, my favourite, the flying butress... all of which indicates increasing knowledge and confidence and the greater understanding of engineering involved.
Had these buildings been built with todays philosophies, financing and fear of failures, I wonder just what sort of structures we would have inherited.
Perhaps more importantly, one wonders how much our approach today, in some fields, might not be limiting our achievments?
Today conservatism rules almost every approach, that and a focus on the bottom line.
Back then they were not driven by the same commercial objectives or financial constraints.
One wonders if they were not far more adventurous than we are today.
JMW
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