They are building a castle the oldfashioned way

THERE’S something about a castle that touches the romantic in us all. Little boys dream of attacking or defending one; little girls dream of being the princess in the tower. Adults browse around their ruins, remembering scraps of history and seeing in their mind’s eye knights, men at arms, lords and ladies — and the serfs on whose labour the whole system depended.
In this country, as in most, the words castle and ruin go together like the proverbial horse and carriage. With notable exceptions, such as the magnificent restoration at Claregalway, the castles in our landscape are slowly crumbling, their roofs long gone, their cut stones pilfered.
It’s the same in most of Europe — except for a corner of France where a castle is not crumbling, or even being restored: it’s being built.
Guédelon is the French equivalent of a townland in a very rural area two hours south-east of Paris, and since 1998 a team of craftspeople have been building a 13th century castle using only the tools and materials of the period.