Master builder
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A master builder or master mason is a central figure leading
construction Construction is a general term meaning the art and science to form Physical object, objects, systems, or organizations,"Construction" def. 1.a. 1.b. and 1.c. ''Oxford English Dictionary'' Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0) Oxford University Pr ...
projects in pre-modern times (a precursor to the modern
architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...
and
engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limit ...
). Historically, the term has generally referred to "the head of a construction project in the Middle Ages or Renaissance period",Olga Popovic Larsen, Andy Tyas,
Conceptual Structural Design: Bridging the Gap Between Architects and Engineers
' (2003), p. 29-30.
with an 1887 source describing the status as follows: The term has also been applied to more broadly include "designers and builders of large-scale construction work who learned their trade in a more formal way than the builders of primitive forms in pre-technological societies... from the times of the Egyptians and Sumerians until (and in some cases beyond) the Industrial Revolution". The phrase has been in use since at least as early as 1610, when
William Camden William Camden (2 May 1551 – 9 November 1623) was an English antiquarian, historian, topographer, and herald, best known as author of ''Britannia'', the first chorographical survey of the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, and the ''Ann ...
wrote in his of "those Wings in Architecture, which the great Master builders tearme Peroma". Later in the same work, Camden writes: Like other trades, master builders were initially trained through lengthy apprenticeships to persons already having that status, often beginning in boyhood, and the "secrets of the Master Builders were often jealously guarded, and treated as sacred knowledge". A 1926 source stated:


References

Construction and extraction occupations {{job-stub