Dry stone walls have always fascinated me.
From our first trip to Scotland in 1972, I have marvelled at them. When you fly over any part of the UK and look down — well, OK, it has to be a clear day — you see these walls criss-crossing the countryside. Called by various names — dry wall, dry stone wall, dry stane wall — they go for miles and miles, turning the countryside into a beautiful crazy quilt patchwork design.
Up close you can see that they are simply stones stacked on top of each other, staying upright for centuries without the benefit of concrete. Of course, the technique isn’t simple, and takes patience and skill to implement. Apparently the stones are so tightly placed you can’t even slide a razor blade or a piece of paper between the stones.
The walls fascinate me on several levels…. how long did it take to build all these walls? How rocky must the land have been to gather so many rocks, who would have had the stamina and the patience to build them? How many generations did it take to enclose a property, even a small feudal property? Well, enquiring minds need to know.
With the advent of technology and search engines (read google) finding things out has become a breeze. So I googled “how many miles of dry stone walls are there in the United Kingdom?” Turns out the answer is lots.
The first website I went into said that there were several thousand miles just in Yorkshire alone. This website was for a dry stone wall builder, so I questioned the number and the limited parameters. Next I found a site that said there were approximately 70,000 miles of wall in England. Then FINALLY, I found one that said in the entire UK, there were approximately 180,000 miles. That’s a lot of wall, and a lot of stones to be dug out, hauled, lifted, placed. Most of the stones apparently were found in fields but some were quarried.
Some farms we have driven by, all the buildings — houses, barns, and other outbuildings — have all been drywall. So it’s not just the hundreds of thousands of miles, it’s the buildings too.
What I read taught me that building this way with stone and no binding agent other than talent and skill, has been around forever. And then I started connecting dots. I remembered our trip to Orkney a few years back and the neolithic ruins at Skara Brae. These were built in 3000 BC. So the Celts built their broches and general buildings using this technique. During our recent trip to France we went to see the great cairn of Barnenez in Brittany, touted as the largest mausoleum in Europe. Built between 4500 and 3900 BC, it’s 75 metres long and 28 metres wide with 11 burial chambers. Dry stone wall construction.
I’m not the queen of research. In our family, Sondra holds that title. But I do love to find things out. I always figured I was well-placed in a communications office, because I am a snoop of the first measure, and I just need to know “stuff”. In this case, I needed to know about dry stone wall, so now, if you’re reading this, YOU are going to find out about dry stone wall, because while I am a curious snoop, I am also a sharing, giving generous kind of person. I share my lunch with my shirt, and I share what I learn by writing about it. So here goes.
Drystone (or dry wall, drystack, or drystane wall) has been around since Neolithic times. I’ve witnessed its results myself in Orkney, through following the Pictish trail through northern Scotland, and through various explorations in France. The Celts used the technique to build their broches (Broch: an iron age, dry stone structure, only found in Scotland, a complex round house varying in size between five and 15 metres in internal diameter, three metres thick, mostly a few metres high. The ones we saw in Orkney had under the floor hot water heat! I warned you that what I learned, I shared). I’m not sure who the curious person was to discover the first broch, because they looks like small grass covered hills in today’s landscape.
In medieval times, monastic houses, especially in the remote locations favoured by the Cistercians were built using the dry stone technique. Then in the middle ages the walls became a system of defining fields. More walls began appear in the 14th and 15th centuries right up to the 18th century. Construction of the walls was at its height during the Elizabethan period when the land enclosure acts were being enforced.
Today, when you drive the single track roads through the highlands, the drystone walls you see are the only signs of habitation you see for miles. When we first started coming to Scotland, the art of stone wall building was almost a lost art. Today, based on websites and the repair work we see going on as we drive, the lost art is being revived. Good thing, because a huge percentage of walls are in disrepair.
The technique is not unique to Scotland. Like bagpipes and kilts, other nations claim dry stone walls. The technique, according the google, is found in at least 35 countries, including Peru (think Machu Picchu), Switzerland, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Sardinia, Italy, France and the United States (Kentucky and North Carolina were specifically mentioned). Sweden has bridges built using the technique. Look out Ken, I now have a driving need to see some of my own heritage in the form of Swedish dry stone bridges. And I read that repairs to Hadrians Wall are being made using dry stone walling techniques. Couldn’t find if the Romans built Hadrians Wall using dry stone techniques. When we were in Spain last year we discovered that the Romans discovered concrete some 2000 years ago, so they may well have used that in their wall to keep the Picts in Scotland. And my memory of seeing that wall in the mist of a Scottish country day gis so old I don’t recall.
Sorry to say that the enquiring mind that had to know how many miles of dry stane walls existed in the UK also strayed into the “how on earth” area. Several different methods were used, according to the reading I did. Older walls, the ones you see meandering over hillsides in the sparsely populated highlands were built from stones cleared from the fields. Many of the walls are the double wall kind, which is why they appear so wide. These walls start with two rows of foundations stones, usually set in a trench. These stones are usually flat (said Captain Obvious) so they sit as level as possible. Outer walls are built up with the stones getting smaller as the wall gets higher. The hollow between the two rows is filled with smaller stones. Spaces between the rocks were “chocked” in with smaller stones. And every now and again larger stones are laid crossways, spanning both faces of the wall to anchor the two sides together. You can see these as they often stick out one side or the other of the wall. the final layer is made of larger capstones which cross the entire width of the wall and stop it from breaking apart.
This starts getting into the “how on earth did feudal peasants figure this out”. I don’t know that either, but they did, and over the centuries the art of building these walls died out and has only recently been rediscovered. Now there’s a nationally recognized certification program operated by the Dry Stone Walling Association with four levels, from Initial to Mater Craftsman.
Reading about these walls has increased my respect for the walls and the people who built them. The thought of picking the rock (even quarrying it), digging foundation trenches, then building 180,000 miles of double-walled and filled, chest-high probably two feet wide wall staggers the imagination. It’s almost like contemplating infinity or the outer edges of the universe. Well, maybe not that profound, but you see what I mean.
Few sign posts, no gift store, just a neolithic ruin, sitting in a field. The Grey Cairn of Camster.
A close shot of the walls of the cairn.
A doorway in to one of the Grey Cairns of Camster.
The Great Cairn of Barnenez, built between 4500 and 3900 BCE. Over the years it was covered in vegetation and forgotten, then rediscovered in 1850.
A crumbling wall reveals building secrets.
This wall, as tall as me, stretched for miles.