Just found out Lincoln Cathedral's bricks got laid almost 900 years ago and are still holding up
I was reading a small history pamphlet at the library last Tuesday and it said the tower at Lincoln Cathedral in England was started around 1141. That means some of that brick and stone has been sitting there for close to nine centuries without anybody redoing it. I have torn out walls from the 1970s that were already crumbling, so this stopped me cold. My granddad did brick work in Ohio for 40 years and he always said the mortar matters more than the brick. Now I think he was right, because those old lime mixes let the wall breathe and move a bit instead of cracking. Anyone else here ever worked with lime mortar on an old building and noticed it holds up better than the new stuff?