Morton Masons Guild

The Morton Masons' Guild has expanded its interests beyond purely matters of stone work and these days covers the whole range of structural building and decorative carving - whether working in stone, brick or wood. This diverse range of trades has most of its members living in the Tawley ward of the town, and this is where their Guild hall is to be found.

Structure

The guild is organised into four branches: the masons, the layers, the chipmen and the carvers. The masons work building stone and may stretch to a little decorative work around windows and doorways but are otherwise focused on the structure of the building and leave the fine work to the carvers. The layers deal with brickwork (the bricks are imported by river from the great brickyards of Castron) and walls made from smaller stones. These two trades generally produce most of the fabric of the buildings these days built in Morton. In most cases the frontages and foundations are of stone with the internal and rear walls built of brick, but this varies by status with most of the poorer houses build entirely of brick, or with very limited stonework. Some of the layers specialise in roofing, with slates or tiles.
The Chipmen work in wood - dealing with the upper floors and rafters for supporting the roofs as well as the temporary scaffolding used by the mason's and the layers during construction. Some of the older buildings in Morton are timber framed and the Chipmen will deal with any repairs needed to this style, but new building in this way has been prohibited by Morton's building bylaws for over a century owing to the risks of fire in a densely populated area.
The carvers are split between the wood and stone carvers and deal with the fine decorative work that is popular in upper class buildings as well as the production of monumental statues, busts and other figurative work for those seeking to memorialise themselves or others.

History

The Morton Masons Guild is one of the products of trade amalgamation that have characterised the development of Morton's Guild system. Originally two separate guilds covered the workers of stone and wood but in 856MD they merged to form a single unified operation to better exert their control over the building trades. Some of the stone workers to this day believe this to have been a mistake (as the fire of 893 resulted in the updating of the building code reducing the reliance on wood and the potential for the constructors in wood to be in competition with those who build in stone and brick.
The incorporation of the brick workers into the masons occurred some 300 years earlier when the use of brick began to take off and the masons were able to sustain the argument to the town authorities that as they already had control of the construction of rubble and small stone block walled structures the newly introduced bricks fell very much into their sphere of interest.

Type

Guild, Craftsmen

Guild Master

The current Guild Master of the Masons is Arrick Pardo Cadu. He began his career as a bricklayer some 30 years ago, qualifying as a guild member at the age of 21 and remaining since as a layer. His election to Guild Master was unusual for he is not a master mason (entitled to run larger building projects and to design buildings) but his commitment to the welfare of his Guild Brothers was such that when the role fell vacant he was (much to his surprise) elected by the master masons as one with the Guild's interests at heart rather than his personal business.

Qualification

The terms for qualifying as member of the guild vary according to the branch; in all cases a five year apprenticeship applies in principle, though in the case of the carvers this will be waived if the artistic competency requirements are met - and a few cases are on record of a person competing their qualification in as little as three days through the production of a skilled piece of carving. For non-townsmen, the bigger limitation on rapid attainment of membership is the need to have been resident in Morton for a year and a day before seeking membership (a standard requirement for all of Morton's Guilds).

Morton's Building Bylaws

Following the fire in 893MD which devastated the lands along the bank of the Durran, and lead to their redevelopment as Wharfare and The Tanneries a series of new laws were enacted concerning buildings in Morton, the key points of which are summarised below:-

• All roofs must be tiled or slated. No thatch or wooden shingled are permitted. This extended the previous ban on thatch (which has been disregarded in the case of many outbuildings) and was also applied retrospectively with all roofs required to comply by no later than 910MD.

• No new timber framed or built walls of more than 2 strides length were to be built. This provision allowed for small outbuildings and for the use of shutters and doors. Unlike the roofing provisions it was not applied retrospectively but a later amendment (in 950) required any wattle and daub or timber infill between the structural timbers to be replaced with brickwork or stone.

• Between buildings there must be either an air gap or a minimum of a forearms' length of brick or masonry and this must be the case from the lowest cellars to the roof line. No rafters may pass through this though they may be embedded in the walls.

A number of other provisions have been made since but these are the key ones that have driven the changes in the design and appearance of the town. Needless to say, the Morton Mason's Guild has been strongly in their favour, and it is doubtless the case that these regulations would not have been as well followed, or as effective in reducing the risk of fire if the Chipmen had not already been part of the Mason's Guild.