Go on a course: dry stone walling

The art of building walls to last a lifetime. By Ruth Chandler

Ever since family holidays on Dartmoor I have wondered how dry stone walls stay up without anything sticking them together. They form field boundaries all over upland Britain, where rocky outcrops are common and the climate is too harsh for hedgerows, but styles vary from the Galloway Wall designed for steep slopes to the Cornish Hedge with its curved sides and turf top.

I went to learn what the Dry Stone Walling Association (DSWA) claims is ‘man's oldest craft' at Lyme Park, Disley in Cheshire, famous as Pemberley in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. This is the heart of dry stone walling country and the 1,400-acre deer park offers plenty of wall to restore. The DSWA two-day training course is money well spent; there are several attentive instructors on hand and at the end you have not only learned sound building skills but have also created a wall that will last for more than 200 years.

At base camp I met the instructors and the 27 other novice wallers, who ranged from twentysomethings to OAPs, and equipped with sturdy walking boots and thick gloves. I partnered up with Keith and the pair of us stood either side of a 3-metre double-width stint of crumbling wall, which was built during the Napoleonic wars. Oddly, before you build a wall you often have to take the existing one apart, so we set to work, laying the stones behind us in lines according to position in the wall, size and width.

"Walling's more about having an eye for design than being built like a gladiator," instructor Phil Davies said, and as I began to fit awkward-looking slabs together, avoiding running joints and supporting and surrounding them with small packing stones, it felt like doing a jigsaw puzzle. I found myself coveting ‘finger' stones, shaped appropriately like bars of gold and ideal for supporting large slabs.

The local sandstone is a difficult material to build with as it throws up an assortment of shapes and angles. Heavy throughstones were placed every metre along the length of the wall, going right through from one side to the other to strengthen it. Then, using increasingly small stones, we built the second ‘lift' (or layer) and the copestones were placed slanting along the top. Shifting around three tonnes of stone takes it out of you, so a hot bath is a must to relax muscles that have been shocked into action. But despite the aches and pains, I felt proud of ‘my wall'.

Apart from their beauty, dry stone walls provide shelter for livestock, protect plants and small mammals and settle naturally rather than cracking.

For more information about the DSWA, call 01539 567953 or visit www.dswa.org.uk.

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