‘I speak for the trees.’ Reconstructing the Notre Dame Cathedral
By Lucie Lefler
The Notre Dame Cathedral Paris is an iconic example of French Gothic architecture. The cathedral dates back to the twelfth century and was the seat of the Archbishop of Paris. Until the fire in April 2019, it was still in use for Sunday mass- yet it is perhaps most famous for its connection to the novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame and the Disney movie associated with it.
Construction of the Notre Dame Cathedral began in the 1160s and finished a century later, but the silhouette we knew until the fire in April 2019 was only completed in 1859. The spire, which was the last of a long saga of replacement spires, was the design of architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, made of 500 tons of wood and 250 tons of lead. Preparatory excavations for the reconstruction of the cathedral were completed June-July 2022, during which archaeologists discovered two lead sarcophagi.
In the aftermath of the fire, President Macron declared the aim for construction to be complete before the Summer 2024 Olympics, which will be held in Paris, but conservation experts have since said otherwise. As the spire is being constructed to replicate Viollet-le-Duc’s 1859 version, and because constructors must be familiar with both mediaeval and modern building methods, it has since been declared that restoration efforts will take at least 15 years to complete.
The main issues surrounding the reconstruction of the Notre Dame are the trees needed to make up the replacement spire and the roof, which were the primary victims of the 2019 fire. The roof alone was made up of several ancient oak beams and was given the nickname la foret, or, “the forest,” and it is reconstructing this that is proving to be the biggest roadblock. This is predominantly because in order to reconstruct both the spire, and the roof, constructors will need at least a total of 2,500 oak trees. About 1,000 of these trees would go to the spire alone.
Beyond this, the oak trees need to fit specific requirements in order to be suitable: according to The Guardian, they need to be between 50 and 90 cm wide, straight, and between 8 and 14 metres tall. They also have to be cut before the sap rises and need to be dried for up to 18 months so that they can be made into beams for the roof and the spire. In order to fit these requirements, the trees would have to be between 150 and 200 years old. According to the Woodland Trust, there is no set definition for an “ancient tree;” rather, the tree just has to be unusually old for its species. That being said, an oak is “notable” if it is between 150 and 200 years old.
The first 85 “notable oaks”, which belonged to French State forests under the National Forests Office (ONF), that were needed to rebuild have already been felled. Private forest owners have also offered to donate trees to the reconstruction. The Deputy Director of the ONF, Dominique de Villebonne, was quoted saying that the ONF will also be leaving “other trees to stand for a long time,” and the ONF is planting new trees for future generations to “create their own exceptional works.” There is no mention of exactly how many trees will be replanted.
That being said, the destruction from the fire in 2019 has left ample opportunity for new discoveries to be made. The thousands of charred wood fragments left of the old la foret give scientists and archaeologists a chance to examine the climate and socioeconomic changes happening during the time in which the original cathedral was being built, called the High Middle Ages. As such, the CASIMODO Project, whose aim is to provide context for those changes, is combining history, archaeology, and bioarchaeology to analyse the fragments of la foret left behind.
The analysation and reconstruction of the Notre Dame Cathedral is an ongoing project, and no doubt there will be several more discoveries as it continues.
You can find out more about Swansea University’s research into Heritage and Regeneration here, and about our MA course in Public History and Heritage here.
