Dry stone walls are such a distinctive feature of many rural parts of Britain; they are exactly what they say they are, walls which are built with stones but no mortar or cement or anything to hold them together. They stay upright and make such an attractive pattern across fields and hills and dales by the skill of the people who construct them, and the design of their construction.
The history of dry stone walls goes back literally thousands of years, and some of the actual walls we see are very old indeed; they are not necessarily actually a thousand years old but there may well have been such walls along the lines of the fields they divide for very many, many centuries. Wherever rocks can easily be found and where there is nothing else which can be readily or easily used to separate and divide, (such as trees or hedge plants) However, there are examples of thousand-year old and older walls in Britain; at Skara Brae in the Orkney Islands, in bronze age settlements in Yorkshire, and in the massive the circular brochs which you can find all across northern and western Scotland.
In different areas of the country there are different styles and types of walls… and an expert could tell you where the wall was from by looking at the style… whether it’s the way the stones are placed, the top of the wall, the way it is finished off, the gate posts, the stiles, the corners…… there are all sorts of clues if anyone has the knowledge. It must be hard to make a dry stone wall, you must be strong and most of all have a good eye to see how the stones best fit together to be strong and resilient and not fall over!
Lois Elsden 