The Mingary Castle restoration blog was written by Jon Haylett, who lives in the local village of Kilchoan. Now that restoration is almost complete Holly and Chris Bull will take over to report on bringing the Castle back to life.

Tuesday 1 April 2014

All's Well, John!

It was good to see John Forsyth back on site this morning.  John is the man who built the incredible scaffolding lattice around the castle - 'incredible' because, while it was magnificent enough when it went up, it's stayed up!  This has been the worst winter in living memory, with more gales than anyone can remember and heavy seas pounding the base of the structure, yet the worst that has happened on the scaffolding is that a few of the boards moved.

John's here to check that all's well - it certainly is.

Meanwhile, down in the moat, there's progress on the biofuel boiler building.  With the breeze block walls in place and the mortar having, in the warmer weather, now gone off, they've put on two layers of plaster and sealed the exterior with bituminous paint to keep it waterproof.

The rubbly face around the structure is being held back with wire mesh which, if you look closely, has been pinned back to the rock.  A layer of Kingspan insulation will be placed against the wall, and the gap then backfilled with rubble.  The wall that remains exposed in the moat will have a facing of local stone to match the castle walls.

Large amounts of builders' materials were arriving as I left and, at any moment, three more static caravans to house the workers who will be arriving.  There's a feeling of anticipation on site, as if, with the winter and the bad weather finally behind us, the project is really going to get cracking.

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