Preparation is the key to success…so the first day of arch building was dedicated to checking the blocks against the “former” (the timber semicircle to support the arch while it is built) and getting the former firmly set up. Note Chris’s sweater, which is a Judith Glue special and says “Uurkni” meaning “Orkney” in Maes Howe viking runes. Bloody Vikings, coming over here building our Roman gatehouses in our Anglo-Saxon monastery sites…
In the photo above, Al and Chris are discovering our first notable mistake, which was my error. Dave made the former as a semicircle of the right size for the blocks, but I mistakenly thought it should be checked against the opening between the pillars and it ended up slightly differently sized. This caused problems as it was now too small for the blocks. Luckily Al had scavenged materials in store and was able to add a thin layer of flexible plastic strip to correct the size of the former.
The easiest way to be sure that the blocks would fit around the former was to lay them all out on the ground, rather than risk finding out there was a problem after lifting the heavy blocks up. This process was good in principle but we did make another mistake which came to light the next day.
It took Chris and Al a full day to fettle the former to the right size, check everything and get it in place ready to lay the blocks the next day.