The Middle Ages in Ozark Stone.

The wind sighs through the cedars in the Ozark hills, stirring branches in the trees. A persistent high pitched tap echoes through the area… tink, tink, tink. A few voices are heard here and there, but other than the sound of sheep and the occasional bark of a dog, there’s little else.

Just over that rise, there are people working, people in trimmed shirts, hand-constructed leather shoes and hats. A rope-maker shows young boys how to weave fibers together to form yarn that’s then woven together into a stronger length of rope. The potter works the clay for mugs and bowls. The softer sound of chisel on wood can be heard coming from a shelter, where the carpenter is working. There’s a hiss down below, where the blacksmith has just dropped a horseshoe into water.

And in the center of it all, on a cleared and slightly muddy hillside, a wall. But more than a wall -- a series of walls and circular stone constructions about shoulder high. In the center, a giant wheel with an arm. There’s a well here, too. And if you let your imagination fly, you can dream of these walls growing to 25 feet in height, with towers soaring up to 45 feet and a Lord’s Tower that will reach 70 feet. You can just see where the drawbridge will be lowered, where ladies and lords will one day pass on a terraced green within.

But for now, there’s the constant buzz of activity as masons set stones carved on-site by hand, slowly but surely assembling a French fortress in the Ozarks.

Michel Guyot

Château de Guédelon

But this isn’t the Middle Ages. Though the bastion on the side of the hill is being constructed from stone milled on site by laborers working by hand, it’s a product of the 21st Century, not the 13th. It’s the brainchild of French entrepreneur Michel Guyot. He’s been involved with other fantastical projects, including the restoration of a number of castle ruins throughout France and the construction of a medieval-esque castle called Guédelon in Burgundy.

Marc and Solange Mirat

Marc and Solange Mirat, two French citizens who have lived in the Harrison area for over two decades, visited Puisaye in September 2008 and were mightly impressed with Guédelon. They offered to sell land they owned in Lead Hill to Guyot for the purposes of building this citadel on American soil. In June 2009 ground was broken, and today the project of building the Ozark Medieval Fortress is well underway.

Underway is the correct term; it takes a bit of a dreamer to be able to visualize what the fortress will look like in 20 years. But those plans are right there when you enter the park.

I traveled to Lead Hill this April to visit the new wonder rising in the area, expecting to find an architectural project underway. What I truly discovered was a fledgling community out to tackle an impossible task, teaching others about life in the Middle Ages at the same time.

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Medieval James

The first person most people meet along the way is Medieval James. I asked him for his full name, and he insisted he’s just Medieval James.

James is the historian at the Ozark Medieval Fortress. He knows everything there is to know about the structure being built and the time it represents.

“For the purposes of the fortress, it’s the year 1226. 1226 is the first year of the reign of King Louis IX of France, who later became ‘Saint Louis‘ and the namesake of the city of St. Louis. It is the middle of the High Middle Ages, a century before the Black Plague.

“Castles were being built all over Europe at this point. There were 15,000 castles in Europe built during this time.”

James gives his talk in a small house just past the visitors center, giving each crowd a good idea of what the castle is and will be. There are diagrams on the wall, three of them -- one showing how the foundation of the fortress was set out in 2010, one of how it should look in 2020 and a third showing near completion in 2030. It’s a long ranging project that will see a polygon plan rise along the hillside.

“Now, it’s not a replica of something else. The architect Christian Courvisier put this plan together with the elements of several extant medieval French castles, but it’s not identical to any castle you might visit.”

James started the tour down a path made from crushed limestone, a by-product of the stone carving process. If the castle had been built in France, it would have been made from locally available stone. Because the fortress is being built in the Ozarks, it’s being constructed from site-quarried Arkansas magnesium-laden limestone. “It’s hard to chisel,” James says, “but it will last millennia.” Since the path needed to be gritted to make it ADA accessible, using the dust and debris from the stonecutting operation was the logical choice.

The stonemasons are experts in their craft, using the quarry there to cut the precise stones needed for the outside of the walls, the carved stones that will decorate the inside and the broken stones that are used as fill between the outsides of the five-foot thick walls. They’ll progress a bit further each year. At the end of last season, they sealed the top of the walls as they were with a wet concrete solution. That layer is chipped away and construction has been started afresh on this year’s progress.

Tiles drying in the sun

It’s not just the stonemasons that have their work cut out for them, cutting and carving and hauling up the rocks that will build the castle. The potter has a real challenge -- creating a workable tile from Arkansas red mud and then creating the 12,000 tiles over six years to cover the roofs on the towers and abodes within.

James takes us past the construction of a paper factory house and past picnic tables set up for visitors down to a model of a wooden fortress, a starting point for the tour. There he explains the difference between a castle and a fortress. “The fortress in the early Middle Ages was purely for protection. No one lived there. The wooden fortresses were built first to protect people before the castle was finished. See, when the Roman Empire fell everything went into chaos. You had the barbarians -- barbarian meant ‘bearded one,’ in the first years. Infidels in the 700s. In the 900s you had the Vikings from the north. You needed to be fortified against these invaders.

“Now, the Europeans knew how the Romans protected themselves by putting up a picket fence around their encampments. The French developed a certain sort of building of these fortresses called a Motte and Bailey -- or mound and courtyard. This was a tall fence surrounding a tower that could be up to 120 feet high, all made of wood.”

He took us from the model into a wooden fortress built right on-site, a demonstration of what would have been built before the castle itself. The wooden sections of fence were pulled tight together, just tight enough you could see through the planks to see who was coming.

“It took 500 years to get to here… 500 years of wooden fortress building. They might last 10 years. Then around 1000 A.D. there was this return of the Roman idea of building with stone. That’s where we come to the castle -- a house to be protected.”

***

We progressed down the path to the first workshop, where sheep grazed in a pen on the right side of the path and a shelter was set up on the left. This is where we met Catherine Koehler, one of the many resident artists who work at the Ozark Medieval Fortress.

Catherine is an expert in fiber arts and medieval illumination who‘s moved here from Mississippi. She, like Medieval James, has studied extensively in her field. Her undergraduate work at the Memphis College of Arts paired with her longtime experience as a medieval re-enactor with the Society for Creative Anachronism have well prepared her for this sort of work.

She described her dress to the crowd following Medieval James. “This is typical of what a French woman would have worn in the Middle Ages,” she told us, “an underdress and an overdress, and something covering the head.”

“Is it hot?” one of the visitors asked.

“It can be, but you get used to it. It reached 115 degrees in the sun this past summer and I was still in layers.”

“It was cooler back then, wasn’t it?” my photographer asked.

“A lot of people think so.” She went on to describe how clothes were colored. “There were dyes that came from all sorts of things -- like this green, it’s dyed from rosemary. We use some stuff here from elsewhere, like cochineal, but we try to grow most of what we use. There are some dyes like madder that we aren’t allowed to plant here, so we get that dye sent to us.”

She showed us how to use a drop spindle to make thread and talked about how felt was made. Catherine also shared with us later about the sheep. The day we came by two new baby sheep were introduced to the flock, and as we discovered they weren’t contained by the fences.



My photographer is apparently a good sheep catcher.

I sat down with Catherine after work to talk about the project and asked her what it was like to work on the site.

“We work five day shifts now,” she told me. “But last year, I worked 10 days on and four days off. It can get really hot. But the castle is amazing.”

Catherine does all sorts of demonstrations, not just for the tours but for individuals who come back through to learn a specific skill, like a little looming or some medieval-style calligraphy or illumination. Every day she’s out there in her layered dresses, another cog in the wheel of life at the fortress.

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The Stone Quarry

James took us along a three quarters of a mile path, stopping at stations along the way. He pointed out brush piles left to draw animals for hunting and a raised bed garden. He showed us how medieval carpenters used a 13-knot rope to construct buildings and take measurements.


He took us past the quarry where stones for the castle are chipped away. And then, right past the stable, we looked out from under a canopy of trees and saw the vast white construction ahead of us.

This is what you see today, a castle in the making. The stone walls have been constructed to anywhere from four to eight feet high in the past year on a long inclined slope. You can see where the surface has been taken down to the rock -- the unique Ozark limestone bedrock meant there was no need for a foundation to be dug out of the dirt.


In the center -- a huge Roman crane. James told us “about 1000 (A.D.), carpenters and stonemasons rediscovered the Roman crane. It’s sort of like a hamster wheel, where a man walks -- not runs, just walks -- and a series of ropes and pulleys raise and move these heavy stones.”

There’s also a well already there, created from the spring at the center of the castle. As it would have in medieval times, it will provide water to the castle once it is built.


I think I was expecting something a little smaller, more like a mansion or large house. But the enclosure is immense -- wider than a football field and fully half as long, more in some places. The rains over the winter have filled the base of the two gate towers. It’s a climb from the bottom of the hill up through the future courtyard to the round bases of the towers and the larger Lord’s Tower that will one day reach 70 feet into the Ozark sky.

The work is already evident -- such as the meticulously carved stones over doorways and the sills of the archer’s slits. The basis of the staircases that will carry people up to higher levels in the towers and the abode that will be constructed there are still being built up.


At this point, little is off-limits. The masons pack up for the day around 1 p.m. and the guides prohibit walking on top of the bare walls. But that’s about it. They suggest you don’t fall in the well.


All around the castle are shelters, lean-tos and stands where artisans work and share with visitors. There’s a massive oven downhill for cooking crusty loaves of bread. The blacksmith’s shop is full of iron pieces and lengths of metal, horseshoes and primitive tools recently forged. There’s a basket weaver, and up the hill you’ll find the potter, if not working at the wheel then tending to the firing of an earthen kiln.

There’s a rope-maker who shows how to weave fiber into strands into string and stronger ropes, a carpenter, a station where you can choose to illuminate your name or a favorite saying. For a small fee you can weave your own wool bracelet or carve your own piece of stone. All the while artisans and volunteers work on the castle, on the tools to create the castle and what will decorate it in years to come, and on the basic needs like sustenance and clothing for this small community.

***

Will you see knights at the Ozark Medieval Fortress? James shares his views on the knights.

“This construction would have been the home of a knight, but a knight was just a warrior who worked for a lord. The term is “vassalage.” It’s a pyramid social system based on the exchange of loyalty and service for protection and land. At the top is the King who owns everything. Below the King were the lords, then their mounted warriors, the knights. The knights owned this land and took care of it and the people on it -- in exchange, they were expected to do their military service to the king -- which might mean they’re away for a while. Real knights aren’t like what you see in movies like ‘A Knight’s Tale.’ ”

***

It’s been just two years since ground was broken on the project, and already there have been visitors from as far away as Italy and Belize, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, Poland and Brazil. The castle has a growing popularity amongst locals here in Arkansas; during my travels I’ve heard from people who have raved over their visit and from others who are trying to fit a visit into their schedules.

The flag marks the well's location.

There is a small problem that the project faces though -- and that’s money. Because the owners are French, they can’t apply for the same sort of not-for-profit status that might help a similar effort created by Americans. They’re having to rely on the generosity of 14 investors, fees for those who come to the fortress and whatever else they can piece together. When you’re talking about a crew of several dozen artists in residence, administrative costs and advertising, that’s a lot of money to recoup.

But everyone I spoke with at the Ozark Medieval Fortress has the highest hopes on its success. For them, failure is not only off the list of options, it’s an impossibility. I’m looking forward to visiting again and again to see the raising of this remarkable castle, to watch it grow and see who comes to observe its progress. Perhaps by the time my child is an adult she’ll be able to tell people how a group of artists and innovators grew a castle in the Ozark hills and merged Southern hospitality with the age of chivalry.

***

The Ozark Medieval Fortress is open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday and 1-6 p.m. Sunday.
Tickets: Adults $18
Children 6-16 $9
Children under six are free
$2 for the tour
Discounts available for groups
Season passes $45 adults/$22.50 kids

(870) 436-7625
www.ozarkmedievalfortress.com
GPS coordinates N 36 26.176, W 93 3.736

For a neat inside view on how the Castle is progressing and about the Middle Ages, check out the great blog Medieval James has put together.  It's an excellent read.

***

UPDATE:
January 20, 2012.  Sadly, the owners of the castle have decided not to reopen it for this season.  They're looking for buyers to take over the project.  I hope someone else steps in and continues this neat project.  There's a lot of people depending on it for their jobs, and frankly it's just a really cool idea.

Architectural and Culinary Restoration at The Grand View Hotel.

Ever just have a dream you want to follow? Ever been brave enough to follow that dream? Alexander Virden has been following dreams for a while. His latest dream could change the face of downtown Berryville.

Virden used to work on oil rigs off the Louisiana coast. He lived in Algier’s Point, just a ferry ride from New Orleans’ French Quarter. Injuries forced him to leave his job as a diver, but he continued on by working to restore homes here and there.
Virden did eventually leave Louisiana, setting off in an RV and just driving where he felt. Something made him stop at Berryville, and that’s where his roaming ceased.

“I asked about this building,” he told me one Saturday afternoon during a late lunch. “I asked about this big building, and no one could remember what it was. I said “you know that building between that little shop and the post office? And people had just ignored it.”

That building was the old Grand View Hotel. It started off life as the Saint George Hotel back in 1902. Though it received an auspicious start with a gala dance in its grand ballroom, the property passed through a number of hands in its first decade. M.M. Hoagland added the balconies and porches to it shortly after he took it over in 1910. Mr. & Mrs. L.C. Smith bought the place in 1926 and renamed it The Grand View Hotel.

Dr. John H. Bohannan bought the hotel in 1943... He eventually added the commercial spaces in front of the hotel for more revenue. But by the early 70s the hotel was closed.

It was purchased in 1984 by Phillis and Carl Loehr, who attempted a massive reconstruction of the building but were unable to finish. It sat fallow for the better part of two decades, gathering bird droppings and an amazing amount of stored away junk. “You couldn’t walk straight through anywhere,” Virden told me. “You’d have to turn sideways. To get through this dining room there was a path from here to the hall. There was scaffolding, there was stuff packed all the way up to the scaffolding and then stuff on top of it. On the stairs it was packed so tight you only had a path just wide enough to go up or down. We hauled out more than 250 cubic yards of junk.”

“We” in this case would be Virden and his partner, Sandra Doss. While we were there for lunch we heard muted noised from the kitchen where she was working. I got the impression she was very shy.

Virden’s dream when he saw the hotel was to refurbish it - not just as a potential hotel but as an art space. He wants to encourage the arts in the small town. He also owns a space down the street, Ozarts.org, 2900 square feet of gallery space and kitchen for local artists. Unfortunately thanks to all the demands and a slow economy he may have to part with that artspace soon.

The hotel, though, had so many possibilities. There are 14 rooms with ensuite baths above the first floor, still in the renovation process but so much further along than they were when Virden first bought the place in November 2005. On the fourth floor there’s a grand open space Virden hopes to utilize as event space -- a large area with its own kitchen that might host artists receptions, weddings and the like. The rooms could be let to artists in residence, possibly. Possibilities seem to be the order of the day at the hotel.

But the main focus these past three years has been on the restaurant. 302 on the Square is part of Virden’s dream -- not just as part of his hotel complex but to finance the completion of the renovations. It’s a time consuming effort, running an eatery -- and it’s eaten into time for actually working on the hotel. But it’s also a labor of love.

The recipes at 302 on the Square are family recipes. The restaurant itself is billed as a “Cajun-American” eatery. “We do the American favorites, hamburger and hot dogs. And we do the kind of food I know from Louisiana, the red beans and rice and stuff.”

I’ve dropped into the 302 before, a couple of summers ago while headed to Eureka Springs. I was taken by a singular dish, the South Carolina Strawberries & Cream ($4.50), only available when strawberries are in season. The marinated berries and heavy cream were served up over a hot flaky biscuit rather than the expected shortcake. The saltiness of that biscuit balanced perfect with the sweetness of the cream and the tart of the berries. It had made an impression upon me.

We dined at the 302 this particular Saturday on many of the eatery’s signature items. We started with simple Grand View Salads ($1.50/$3/$5 based on size), a nice mixture of green leaf lettuce, spinach, red onion, tomato and cheese with a choice of dressings. I went for a simple balsamic vinaigrette and was pleased.

What came out next though was something I can only describe as a momento of my childhood. The dish, listed on the menu as Louisiana Chicken and Gravy ($7.50), was straight out of my grandmother’s recipe book. The thick skillet pepper gravy, smothered free range chicken (all the restaurant’s poultry comes from Little Portion), that flavor of homemade poultry seasoning and a little thyme and butter, all served over a mound of extra long grain rice… that’s the sort of thing that will take me back. It was exactly what I remembered, very warm and hearty and peppery and… I lost myself in the dish. I really did. I took some of the gravy and ladled it onto a piece of the flaky biscuit that comes with the dish. This is the sort of thing that should be well preserved. This.

My dining companion’s selection was the Authentic Cajun Red Beans and Rice with Andouille Sausage ($7.50), served up with a sweet corn muffin. This too was served over the long rice. The roux in the dish was evidently perfect, a gravy-thick base to the substantial heft of the beans and the salty well-seasoned Andouille.

By themselves, the beans wouldn’t have been seasoned enough and the sausage would have been overwhelming. Together they were perfect.

The cornmeal muffin, yellow cornmeal, was sweet but not so very sweet as to be Northerly offensive. A pat of real butter made it even softer. Very nice.

Of course, being a restaurant in Arkansas there was of course a Reuben sandwich. This one ($6 served with kettle chips) was one of the better examples I’ve encountered. The sliced corned beef is tender and cut against the grain so that it falls apart in your mouth.

I liked the variation of chopped slaw -- which made it far easier to get a good bite out of the sandwich without mess. The dressing was tangy, and the Swiss cheese was more than ample -- a definite contender to the sandwich rather than an accompaniment or afterthought, a mistake many make with their Reubens. The very soft marbled rye was a nice touch.

And then came the catfish. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a big fan of fried catfish. It’s too often done badly -- whether from improper cleaning or a badly chosen source. I just usually don’t order it. But here, I was happy with it.

The batter was light but thoroughly seasoned with salt and pepper, a cornmeal batter that wasn’t overdone. And the fish itself… it… it was clean and flaky and properly cooked, good enough for me to convert.

The catfish is new on the menu… it wasn’t there when I’d made my previous trip. Just another branching out for Virden and Doss. “We get our catfish from Mississippi,” Virden told me. “We make sure it’s clean. That’s a family recipe we use for it.”

The hush puppies that come along with it are yellow cornmeal orbs with chunks of white onion and a little sweetness to them, an inch and a half in diameter. I’d consider the hush puppies and fish to best be eaten with the terrific green tomato relish offered with them… but then again, I love tomato pickles like this. That’s what I grew up on. My dining companion was not as convinced, preferring a little cocktail sauce with his fish.

There were French fries, and they were decent -- but then there was the coleslaw. I am used to coleslaw either being crunchy or very soft, and if it’s crunchy there’s a real lack of flavor to it. Not here. Somehow or another Doss has managed to make this a worthy coleslaw. “She makes it all up in small batches,” Virden told me. “She cuts up the cabbage and stuff and makes up the dressing separately, and she only combines them a little bit at a time as we go along.” It works. The crunchy vegetation is matched with a sweet and creamy dressing that doesn’t have any hint of staleness to it.

And then there was dessert. While strawberries were undoubtedly out of season, there were other options on the menu -- including several ice cream treats. One of the desserts we sampled was The Grand View Brownie Bar ($2.50, an additional $1.75 a la mode). This long brownie was topped with a thick chocolate frosting, and there was just about as much chocolate inside. It’s a smack-your-lips chocolate concentration. The premium vanilla ice cream comes from nearby Highland Dairy.

I forgot about the brownie (until I looked at the notes and photos) once I tried the Dang Good Pie ($3.50, a la mode for $1.75 more). The recipe comes from a friend, whose grandmother's grandmother had it in her collection. Five generations back, a recipe dating back to the 19th century… and well now. We’re talking about a pineapple-coconut pie. My first thought when I tasted it was how buttery it was. It was very much like pineapple upside down cake -- but with coconut. It was almost meaty in texture, with such a strong and delicious brown sugar flavor to it. The crust was handmade, too, unsweetened butter crust nice and crisp, with a little dotting of whipped cream to top it off. I loved this pie. This is one of the best pies I have ever had in Arkansas. And it’s generational. Wow.

It was an impressive meal -- especially for lunch -- and much of it went back with us as leftovers.

There’s far more work to be done on the hotel. Virden’s next project is to complete the renovation of the Garden Room on the back of the first level and to add a small greenhouse off the back so he and Doss can start growing their own herbs and vegetables to use in the restaurant. That’s going to be quite a bit of work, but I’m sure they’ll manage.

I enjoyed the chance to sit down with Alexander Virden but lamented one thing. This was the second time I’d attempted to make it up on a Friday night, but both times snow on the roads had postponed my trip. I have to go back -- and probably will -- come this April or May. I have to go enjoy the Hootenanny.

That’s right, every Friday night starting at 7pm local musicians come in and jam the way the hollows around these parts have been jammed for more than a century -- with good local folk music played on local instruments. I want to hear the hoot and holler and kick back with a sing-along or two. This experience will have to wait for another time, sadly. Seems I keep bringing snow to north Arkansas this year.

There is more you can learn about The Grand View Hotel… on the website documenting its rebirth. You can also find a complete menu for 302 on the Square and start planning for your next run through town. I doubt you’ll be disappointed. Both can be found on the Berryville Square. For more information you can call (870) 654-3952.