Scottish Castles
We’ve just made a stone fireplace for a castle in Scotland. It’s in a dark red sandstone the blocks for which were supplied from a quarry on the Castle owner’s estate. The fireplace was a copy of one they had a picture of that was in some now-demolished part of the castle.
It’s a really big fireplace: Pillars about 4 feet high, and the opening width is about 8 feet. The head is made from segmented, keystones, and it will house a massive open fire. A lot of skill is needed to install stone fireplaces of this size and weight. The segmented arch has to be fully supported throughout construction, as it will not support its own weight until the final stone is fixed in position.
Once in positon though, this form of head is immensely strong, and is ideally suited to the construction of a stone fireplace where the size is such that a one piece head would just be too heavy to handle. We will post pictures on here once the installation is complete.
The castle has a great deal of restoration work to follow and no doubt there will be other fireplaces and stone works to complete.