Thank you Sir Isaac

A brief Physics lesson today.

The new lintel beam was lifted into place this week using a set of principles first written down by Sir Isaac Newton about a hundred years before the present building at La Basse Cour was built (Adam has a theory that part of the present building is older than 1798 but more on that in a future blog).

The new oak beam weighs 200kg and we had to lift it about 2.8 metres to its new home, having hauled it off the trailer and onto the ground Adam and I tried to work out what to do next

The Palan (winch) starts to lift the beam

Half way

Adam does the hard work as the lintel nears its destination

The beam hanging outside the wall near to its final location

 Here's where Sir Isaac comes in. Newton's first law of motion says (from Wikipedia):

Lex I: Corpus omne perseverare in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directum, nisi quatenus a viribus impressis cogitur statum illum mutare.

 
But of course this was how he wrote it originally in Latin.

More usefully in English:

Law I: Every body persists in its state of being at rest except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by force impressed

 So, with 200kg of beam hanging in mid air all three of us got up on the scaffolding and, using our feet, compelled it to change its state by force impressed. Here it is seated in its final location on its stone pads.
 

Thanks Sir Isaac !!