Ozark Medieval Fortress Rocks

A big question very often asked on tours is “How big is the Ozark Medieval Fortress really going to be?”.  The historical perspective of the answer is that it is, according to the French designer, a castle of medium size for France in 1226.  For a guest visiting the Fortress, the answer is that it is huge and one unbelievable amount of rocks.  Think of it: the castle is approximately 200 feet side to side in a modified pentagon with each side about 100 feet and each corner  has a 30-foot diameter tower. The Gate House towers are actually a pair of towers.  The walls are 5 feet thick.  Now, ignoring the fact that the Lord’s Tower walls are thicker and there will be internal walls for the Great Hall, etc., and ignoring all of the work hauling sand, lime and water, let’s just take a quick look at the amount of rock for the Fortress construction. 

Basically, the four main towers and two gate house towers cover about 600 square feet and will be 45-feet tall (the Lord’s tower will be taller) which gives us 27,000 cubic feet.  The walls between the towers are about 500 feet total and will go to 24 feet tall with 5-foot thickness, giving us about 60,000 cubic feet of wall.  If the average rock after shaping at the quarry or in the stone cutter’s hut is 4 inches high by 6 inches wide by 6 inches long, it takes 12 stones per cubic foot.  This means there will be over 1 million stones quarried, shaped or carved, carted, handled and mortared.  And talk about handling, if each stone is about 10 pounds, that’s 5,000 tons of rock all moved by hand.  WHEW! 

Any way you look at it, the Ozark Medieval Fortress is impressive.