Dry Stone Walls (On Tour in the UK, 1997)

Rebecca and I lived in the UK for 18 months or so in 1996 and 1997. That's when I became interested in Dry Stone Walls... and I would often take pictures when I could. Here are a few.

Tintagel, Cornwall, England, Easter 1997.
This is a brilliant example of a peculiarly Cornish style of walls - in slate areas this method had to be used as the slate doesn't bear weight very well at right angles to its grain. So instead the weight is transferred down more with the grain than against it. Looks very good as well.

Ungeshader, Isle of Lewis, Scotland, May 1997.
This is a very good example of a skilled craftsperson's work. Although the rock is of reasonably variable sizes and shapes (contrast this with the rock in the Littleborough pictures) whoever did this has managed to work with it to a beautiful result.

Doune Carloway, Isle of Lewis, Scotland, May 1997.
Now this really is a wonder; it's the remains of an ancient fort. I later wrote up a diary of this particular trip, and this what I had to say about the broch:

"[It] is the best example surviving of many hundreds of such fortifications in Scotland's north and west dating from around the first century AD and one theory suggests that the brochs were built to repel Roman slave raiders. It sits on a ridge overlooking the sea: it's about 40 feet tall, and about 50 feet in diameter; the entrance is a very low doorway. It was extremely cunningly constructed: two tapered drystone walls, one inside the other, with flat supporting stones running through both walls arranged in a spiral pattern up the tower so that defenders could quickly climb to the top whilst inside the walls. It used to be about 40 feet tall right around, but now there's only about half of it left, a large diagonal bite having been taken from it. The outer walls have a perfect and steep slope, with very few gaps for fingers. There's a story about how the MacAuleys got revenge on a Morrison cattle-raiding party: a MacAuley climbed the outside of the broch using a pair of knives; in his teeth he held a burning torch. Once at the top he set fire to the thatched roof hiding the Morrison party and burnt them out."

"While in the [Great Bernera] museum I had read of an enterprising Bernera man in the 1860s who engineered a solution to another local problem. In high summer the lobsters [Bernera's main industry] were at their most plentiful around Bernera; but because of the warmth and the distance to market it was not worth trying to export them. Before leaving for Australia to make some money, he marked out a site beside a narrow bay of Loch Risay. When he returned five years later, he used his money to build a dry stone wall right across the bay, cutting it off from the sea. The tide was able to run through the stone wall, aerating the water, but anything within could not escape. Now, he could store the lobsters caught during the good weather of summer and sell them later when the market had picked up in the autumn. He could even supply them out of season, during the winter."

"The wall must have been 20 feet at its deepest and was a good three feet wide all along the top. Large flat stones had been placed on top, so I walked across into the middle: I had read in the museum of people mooring their boats here and kids fishing from it, so I guessed it would be fairly safe. The incoming tide was about 2 feet higher on the outside and gushing through the many small gaps in the wall. It was, without a doubt, the coolest man-made thing I had seen in the islands: I sat on the edge with my feet over the water and spared a thought for the builder. People said he was mad, wasting his money, that it would never work. But he laughed all the way to the bank, and the loch continued to be used right up into the 1930s. Besides being a canny businessman, he was also a scientist on the side: his lobsters started breeding in the loch, and his observations of their life-cycle were the first ever made."

On the previous page, I gave a very rough description with some pictures of my experiences building a Dry Stone Wall.