THE MASON

The mason was several skills in one person ; he was a bricklayer, a stonemason and the one who prepared the mortar that held the stones in place. In Valence, when the church was built, the builder/stonemason would engrave his name, mark or initials by turning the stone upside down, making it difficult for a bricklayer laying the stone to know which way it fitted into the structure as he was likely to be illiterate and the inscription in latin ! The stone is visible on the first southern buttress of the church.

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      After serving his apprenticeship the builder was publicly declared « ... freed from his apprenticeship… qualified and sufficient for the said trade ». In order to perform his profession he paid an entry tax that was shared between the corporation and the town and he was declared to be a « mason of free stone » stone that was freed of tax because the mason worked with « noble » stone, hard and dense.

From the start of the day, when the church bell rang for the first service, his working day started and would last 14 hours in Summer. In Winter, the days were shorter and in  colder regions with snow and frost, mortar often froze and no work could be achieved. On those days he he worked on cutting the stones that he would use later, as soon as work could begin again.

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He benefited from breaks in his working day. There was the mid-morning break, the midday meal, a snack in the afternoon, and other short breaks for quenching his thirst or  answering a call of nature, or simply to converse. Altogether these could take up one or two hours. No work was done at night-time, lighting would have to be from flaming torches and this was a fire-risk. Days without work weren’t paid, but there were exceptions.

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The mason might also take part in the repair of the ramparts damaged after an attack, for a lower wage. In normal circumstances the mason earned 12 deniers per day without food, 18 deniers with food (at the end of the 15th Century a chicken cost 2 or 3 deniers, a whole pig 24 deniers, a quart of wheat 16 deniers). He was by no means rich, but his situation enabled him to provide work for two colleagues who were less well off.

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The « favre » forged the tools without which he could not work and he took great care of them: hammer, trowels, plumb-line and the archipendulum to build walls ; pincers, spanners, cutters, chisels, sledgehammers and a set-square for accurate cutting of the local limestone. He mixed sand, water and quicklime with a hoe to obtain the mortar he needed.

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When he was working on large buildings such as Valence church, the carpenter would create supports for the vaults of the arches as well as machines for heavy lifting known as « goats » or « squirrel cages » to raise the stones to the high points of the construction.

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THE BASTIDE’S SECRET

The Mason: « I work my fingers to the bone all day, but never at night. Well, in the normal run of things…. They call on me sometimes for the devil of a job, one where I work in darkness and damp, and I’m paid double. It’s hard to refuse when you have five mouths to feed at home! But forget I said anything ….. » Word 7/11 : near

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Go to Grande Rue and talk to the newcomer