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Notre Dame

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So sad to see fire devastating this beautiful building. It's not just the building itself but all the history it contains. I find cathedrals quite magical because of the skill of all the workmen who built and decorated them hundreds of years ago. I feel buildings hold the spirit of the people who built them. I hate seeing all their skill and hard work being destroyed. 

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It's the only news item covered here this morning and is a National disaster. The Government has pledged 200M€ for the restoration, but looking at what's left it will be a very long job. I think the biggest problem will be finding enough craftsmen to do the work and they may be forced to rebuild the roof with modern materials.

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5 hours ago, Beantree said:

It's the only news item covered here this morning and is a National disaster. The Government has pledged 200M€ for the restoration, but looking at what's left it will be a very long job. I think the biggest problem will be finding enough craftsmen to do the work and they may be forced to rebuild the roof with modern materials.

I just read that a lot of millionaires have pledged their support to help the rebuild too which is nice to see!

Hopefully the builders will be able to source some of the materials as they would have been way back when.

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Apparently the roof timbers weighed between 3 and 10 tons each and, looking at the aerial photographs, there were hundreds of them, or perhaps thousands. It is incredible that such a huge and complex structure, with all that weight, was built 850 years ago. Unfortunately finding oak beams in France now could be difficult, as a large part (in this region all) of the ancient oak woodland has been 'thinned out' for fuel. However I am sure there must be oak woodland remaining somewhere in Europe. We have two very large and beautiful oaks on our property; one of the reasons we bought it. Hopefully no-one will turn up to cut them down!

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1 minute ago, Beantree said:

Apparently the roof timbers weighed between 3 and 10 tons each and, looking at the aerial photographs, there were hundreds of them, or perhaps thousands. It is incredible that such a huge and complex structure, with all that weight, was built 850 years ago. Unfortunately finding oak beams in France now could be difficult, as a large part (in this region all) of the ancient oak woodland has been 'thinned out' for fuel. However I am sure there must be oak woodland remaining somewhere in Europe. We have two very large and beautiful oaks on our property; one of the reasons we bought it. Hopefully no-one will turn up to cut them down!

Maybe they'll replace them with something less combustable? While it looked beautiful, all the ancient wood obviously would have acted like kindling! Although I suppose they can probably treat wood far more effectively these days for fire retardation. Oh, what a shame. At least no one appears to have been killed or injured badly.

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The latest news is relatively positive.  The basic structure is safe and the majority of the windows still intact.  And the treasures inside the Cathedral seem to have been saved.  The architect who restored Windsor Castle was saying that France had many of the skilled craftsmen to work on it, although some skills will need to be relearned. It will rise again I am sure. 

Edited by Patricia W
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Slightly off topic (sorry!) but picking up on Patricia's comment on craftsmen.......reminds me of the programme of a couple of years back when Ruth Goodman, Peter Ginn and some other bloke that wasn't Alex Langlands 'worked' on a 'medieval' castle being built from scratch somewhere in France. It's an archeological experiment using purely medieval techniques.

I hope that Notre Dame is restored 'as was'; I did hear something on the wireless about using this as an opportunity to 'update' an ancient building very much like the glass pyramid was put in at The Louvre! Aggggggghhhh! NOOOOOOOO!

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Apparently the target is to finish restoration by 2024. In the meantime they are covering the building to make it watertight and have put out a request to two million woodland owners for suitable oaks. Seems the difficulty is getting trees that are tall and straight enough, which certainly rules out our oaks. They have identified the skill shortage and intend to train the necessary workforce 'on-the-job'. Windsor castle was mentioned here as an example of what can be achieved, but from the film I saw it looked like the roof timbers there were replaced with softwood?

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On 4/16/2019 at 2:17 PM, Beantree said:

 However I am sure there must be oak woodland remaining somewhere in Europe. We have two very large and beautiful oaks on our property; one of the reasons we bought it. Hopefully no-one will turn up to cut them down!

Our New Forest - that was planted to provide timber for Henry VIII's fleet; there's still plenty of wood there.

I can't comment on the refurb of Windsor Castle, but I doubt they used soft wood... a friend is a specialist restoration architect - I will ask.

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