Nepalese Gate

Over this last week three of our members have constructed a Nepalese gate in the Edinburgh Botanical Gardens - Richard provided the following report.

Dave, Alan and I agreed to spend Tuesday and Wednesday last week leading the construction of a Nepalese gate at the front of an area in the Botanics showing plants and flowers indigenous to Nepal. Nepalese gates are found in Western Nepal and consist of two roughly built pillars capped with a large lintel stone. Locals and travellers ring a bell attached to the lintel as they go through, presumably as part of a Buddhist ritual.
 
The original idea was for us to involve staff, volunteers and students, who work and/or study in the Botanics, in the construction. As you can see from the complexity of the gate’s design, this was no easy task for us, let alone complete novices, so we engaged several students and staff on the first day in emptying about 20 bags of Denfind stone, which they spread out in front of the construction site for us. It soon became obvious that the stone was mostly of middle sized pieces: nothing too big or small. It would have been useful to have had some larger flat pieces to spread the load on a solid foundation, as there was no hard core available.

The base of each pillar was about 1.25 x 0.8 metre square. The internal shape of each pillar was concave and was built using two formers, while the outside had to be battered sufficiently to bring the base length in from 3.3 m to a final 2.4 m, which was the length of the 800 kg cap stone. Because this cap stone was not of uniform width the final width of one pillar had to be somewhat less that the width of the other pillar, as we needed all stones to be secured to prevent idle hands from loosening anything after we had departed.

Unfortunately the two days we had set aside proved to be insufficient, even with the help of other volunteers sorting stone into piles of equal thickness. Much hammer work was required to trim the very square and sometimes cut stone available. Accuracy in laying each course proved challenging for all and the final few courses had to be absolutely level and secure to allow the cap stone to sit snugly on the top.

By the time Alan and I had completed the second pillar on the second Wednesday, finished off with a sprinkle of sand, the heavy lifting squad brought in a JCB and chains to carry out the delicate task of raising the lintel in the correct orientation and as horizontally as possible so that it sat neatly on the top. All went remarkably well, except that, as Alan had predicted, it’s very difficult to get something to sit perfectly on all points of contact. Once the lintel was in place we created a few thin slivers or shims under it so that every face stone was as tight as we could make it.

The bell will be fitted in due course, a plaque is being devised to attach to the gate and Dave hopes to attend a ‘soft opening’ on Tuesday next week. I will join Will Hinchliffe, the Botanics staff member leading the project, in March to give a talk to the Friends of the Botanics about the project. It was lot of hard effort and great fun because of the camaraderie which built up during the week or so we were on site. We did get three free lunches in the staff canteen, but, as you can see, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.