Jefferson County Hosts Traditional Mortar Workshop

By Gordon HopkinsJefferson County hosted a traditional mortar workshop on Monday and Tuesday this week, April 7 and 8, where attendees learned the skills to work with traditional mortars from Nigel Copsey, a seasoned stonemason and conservator with extensive experience in historic masonry repair and conservation.Day one of the workshop was classroom training, lead by Copsy. Day two gave attendees practical, hands on training at the historic lime kiln site and nearby house, north of Fairbury.Copsey began his career as a dry-stone waller in Cornwall. He trained in stonemasonry and carving at Weymouth College after 1989. He has since worked across southern England and internationally, consulting on projects from Vermont to Andalusia. One of those projects was the renovation of the Jefferson County Courthouse in 2005.In 2001, he served as masonry consultant for the Irish Hunger Memorial in New York City.The workshop was organized by Berggren Architects P.C. with approval from Nebraska State Historic Preservation Office and Association for Preservation Technology Central Plains, and with support from The Nebraska Masonry Alliance and Mid-Continental Restoration Company. Jerry Berggren, owner of Berggren Architects P.C., spoke with Jefferson County Commissioners about the workshop at a meeting on Tuesday, March 19, 2028. Berggren discuses the value of traditional mortar, used when the Jefferson County Courthouse was first constructed in 1891, over more modern methods and materials.“The type of mortar that they used to assemble the building was heavy in lime, probably didn’t have any Portland cement in it,” said Berggren. “Over time, Portland cement became more readily available, and particularly, my personal theory is, during World War Two things had to be built fast. The more Portland cement you put in the mixture, the quicker it sets up. Lime is very slow to set up. After the war, everyone got used to building things fast, and we lost a lot of the formulas, basically, of those traditional mortars.” According to Berggren the lime kiln and house were a major reason Jefferson County was chosen as the site for the workshop, “When I hired Nigel 20-some years ago, and he came here, he wrote the most fantastic mortar analysis that I’d ever seen to that point, and introduced me to your lime kiln.”

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