DRY STONE WALLS

Cotswold dry stone walls go back hundreds of years.  They are built without mortar, each side slopes inwards with a fill of small stones in the middle.  The bottom of the wall is about 500 wide, the top about 300, then there is a capping of some kind.

The stones themselves are laid sloping slightly downward to shed the water, so the wall stays dry inside.  Properly made they last for many years without much maintenance.

The thing amazed me was the sheer number and length of the walls (it’s the same in Yorkshire).  Some of the walls by the road were 8ft high and ran by the road for many kilometers, and that doesn’t count the ones around the paddocks.  When you think of the weight of stones which need to be carted on horse carts, picked by hand and cut to shape you realise that the labour force and effort was enormous.  We don’t think of that anymore because fencing is now easy – wire and strainers are (relatively) easily placed.

As an alternative to this there was only wooden fencing, which was time consuming and fragile (no split posts like in Australia because the wood was not so easy to handle).  Or hedges.  Hedges were either thick Hawthorne or laid Hawthorne – see the post on that.

 

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