somewhere in the US, a man built a stone castle single handedly, useing whatever tools he could get, so not historicaly accurate, but the insights into what can be done would be valid, started in the 70's?, 60's, and last I heard had found a sucessor to continue construction
I know a man who built a stone barn from salvaged granite foundation block's, and have watched an very large amish timber frame barn go up, by hapenstance on a back road in Pennsylvania, and have a bit of stone and timber frame experience myself, so seeing stuff like this makes my hands itchy.....abandoned quaries bieng plentiful
Bear in mind in Europe tons of buildings merged both Medieval and a Modern (Englightened) era as progress happened. For instance, the style of the buildings in the the old town of Salamanca, which is obviously not 100% medieval.
There's something similar in France, built by a lone poor mailman on his off time over a period of ~33 years. Now that I'm reading about it, it doesn't even have an English Wikipedia entry (!). Which is a shame, it's arguably incredibly beautiful and definitely a unique piece or architecture/art.
It really brings to the forefront that the hard part isn’t usually the building - it’s figuring out how to build with what is available and can be sourced locally - often within tens of feet.
We’re so used to shipping pine boards from the Pacific Northwest to the high desert we don’t even stop to consider there may be another option.
Fun fact: concrete is so heavy and so time dependent that it’s one of the few things that is still almost always VERY local; you probably have a home of cement mixers closer than you think!
I think my first worry would be how to figure out if the ground will support the immense weight of a one-off stone structure. I guess karsty/rocky areas are a safer choice than run-of-the-mill New England yard where you hit water table in 2 feet of digging
Some places the "When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England." quote is closer to the truth than you'd expect, but yes, "good strong land" is one of the keys to a long-lasting structure.
Building very slowly can alert you to issues there, but they didn't always catch them (Pisa for example).
These are so common in England they have a name: follies.
Typically named after (often Victorian) idle playboy who built them, and often with no attempt made to conceal their origins; they are only as "medieval" as the tastes of the playboy ran (so, more Tennyson than Terry Jones).
