Building a medieval castle from scratch

In the forests of Burgundy in central France stands a medieval castle. It's partially built not because it's in ruins but because it's still under construction. It looks and sounds like the year 1255. The challenge here is to build as they would have in that era. Long before electricity using tools fashioned by blacksmiths and laying stones by hand. It's a mixture of sand and lime and water. This is like old glue that we use to stick all of our stones together. And this will last for? And this will last thousands and thousands and thousands of years no problem. This is what the Romans and the Greeks used. Ben Wallace was restoring old buildings when he visited this castle called Guedalon as a tourist and applied for a job. How is it to have been a stonemason as a career and then to discover this place exists? A bit of a dream really. The possibility to work as they did back in medieval times. To take the time as well to do things properly. They are taking time. This project started 27 years ago and is still expanding into a medieval village. Why build a castle? I was staying a little modest. I don't speak about cathedral. A cathedral would have been even more complicated. A little more. Co-founder Marlon Martin worked with the unemployed and liked the idea of creating jobs in rural France. Today the project is sustained through ticket sales to 300,000 visitors a year. I want that people stay here and let their imagination go. The castle is here because of this quarry where Tundra Chaurin extracts sandstone for the walls. I can select in this slate how many stones I want to cut out of it. In a modern quarry, it's huge trucks and heavy equipment. What's used here is an iron wedge and sledgehammer. It's a lovely job. Lovely? What makes it lovely? Imagine that this simple block is going to represent a beautiful stone in the castle with beautiful geometrical shapes. My job in Guédelon is really to grow medicinal gardens. Resident herbalist Emma Blondy nurtures plants not just for food but medicine using medieval documents as a guide. I just grind in like this until I have a very fine powder. Paint recipes from the Middle Ages have been unearthed too. It's a mix with some the white of the egg, some cherry tree gum. Yes, I know. Claire Pio's palette for wall designs comes from what's found on castle grounds. So we have some different stones, clays, charcoal, ochres. In this bold effort to build a castle from scratch, they're following a design that dates back to France's King Philip II and 800 years later, it's fostering a new generation of specialist artisans. When Notre-Dame burned in Paris, workers came from the castle to help and share expertise. What's the bigger value to this project? It's very green. We take the nature, trees, sand, stone, and we do a medieval castle. But we can imagine to take the same materials to do her house. It's a so modern adventure. It's a modern adventure. Building skills and realizing a dream by looking back to the design and ways of another time.