Abstract :
[en] St. Martin in Liège is a monumental gothic collegiate church built during the XVIth century and located at the top of a small hill overlooking the city. Plundered and ransacked by revolutionaries at the end of the XVIIIth century, the building remained in very bad shape during the following decades, due to lack of money.
Shortly after its creation in 1830, the Kingdom of Belgium developed ambitious politics of conservation and restoration of historical monuments, seen as keystones of the new country’s identity. In this particular historical context, the Commission royale des Monuments – Royal Commission on Historical Monuments – declared the emergency to launch a huge restoration campaign of the church, one of the most impressive of the country. Thanks to a financial help of the City, the Province of Liège and the Government, the works started as soon as in 1843. It took decades for them to be completed, under the direction of several architects (Jean-Charles Delsaux, Évariste Halkin, Auguste Van Assche and Hubert Froment). Several studies have been published about these architects, their philosophy of intervention and the global history of the restoration, but none of them addresses the workmanship and the history of the restoration worksite, which remains a largely unexploited research field for the monument, the city of Liège and, more generally, for the whole Belgium.
Based on a combination of documentary research (bill of quantities, contracts, book-keeping, delivering receipts, administrative correspondence, iconographic documents, etc.), and archaeological analysis of the monument, this communication proposes to provide a new insight on this subject, thanks to an important archive kept by the church council, largely unexploited until now. It will explore and analyse the whole operational chain of natural stone and the various actors involved in the process, from the architect’s drawings until the construction of the wall by masons, also addressing the work of quarrymen, stone carvers, boatmen and inspectors. It aims at understanding the human, technical and economical aspects of the implementation of natural stone during one of the earliest and most important restoration worksites of the city of Liège.