Drystone walling

[greensurfingbear]

Work agreed to send me on a weekend dry stone walling course. It's something I've wanted to do for ages 😃Thought folks might like to see some pictures.

had to walk through a rather nice wood land to get to the wall we were going to working on

approaching the wall that other trainees had already worked on. High standard set by them

then it was a case if dismantling the old collapsing wall and getting back to the foundations. Torrential rain meant iPhone was put away until the weather cleared. By then we'd re-established the foundations and was well into the first course

once the onto the first course things sped up considerable

by the time the wall was knee height it was 1600 and the day was drawing to an end. Just enough time to put the thought stones on ready for tomorrow

Orric

 

[greensurfingbear]

Reserved for Sundays pics


Orric

 

[entherder]

It's still difficult to grasp that some of your walls date back to the Romans. Some of he walls in the US date back all the way to the 1940's! LOL Very nice day out!

 

[MertzMan]

I wish my job would send me drystone walling! Looks like a great day out!

 

[greensurfingbear]

So back at "The Wall". Yesterday it was knee height by the end if play today it was chest height.

Orric

 

[jackcbr]

Just a little jealous. Always fancied doing a bit of that.

 

[Robbi]

we have lots of field walls like this over here

http://mountainviews.ie/walk/58/_serverdata/pix3/picroute-00058-1.jpg

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q...5279AA612E71F89ED4750B9577E&selectedIndex=120

 

[Elen Sentier]

Looks very good. Lucky you

 

[treadlightly]

Well done and thanks for putting it on the forum.

 

[greensurfingbear]

I did the course through work but the group who taught me only charge £45 for a weekend course. If folk are interested I'll put link up for them. It's a group of mostly retired gents doing it for the love of it.


Orric

 

[General Strike]

It's still difficult to grasp that some of your walls date back to the Romans. Some of he walls in the US date back all the way to the 1940's! LOL Very nice day out!

I think the majority of drystone walls in the UK date back to the Acts of Enclosure, when a lot of grazing land which was previously held in common was divided amongst landowners. Drystone was in use before this time, but the 1700s and 1800s were centuries of major proliferation. Some remnants of the wall around the City of London are Roman, as is Hadrian's Wall, but neither of these are of drystone construction. Presumably the same is true of some other Roman cities such as York or Lancaster - where the old city wall remains.

 

[greensurfingbear]

It's still difficult to grasp that some of your walls date back to the Romans. Some of he walls in the US date back all the way to the 1940's! LOL Very nice day out!

aye some friends of mine from colorado came to visit when doing their european tour and were blown away by the age of the buildings and such like. used to build things right over here once upon a time lol

 

[Stringmaker]

That looks a super piece of work; good for a couple of hundred years at least?

Are those "A-frames" widely used to keep the angles correct or just for inexperienced wallers?

 

[Dreadhead]

nice work bud. somehow i managed to get a bsc in countryside management without ever building a dyke. always felt i missed out bigtime, will definitly have to get on a course in the future!

 

[mrcharly]

It's still difficult to grasp that some of your walls date back to the Romans.

I know what you mean. When I moved to the UK from Australia I spent a lot of time catching flies.

The house I live in now predates white settlement of Western Australia. Even the windows are older than the oldest building in Western Australia.