| On a lot of the National Trust
Working Holidays there is the opportunity to undertake the ancient skill of Dry Stone
Walling. In the Events Directory on their Internet web site we saw that the National Trust wardens were organising a Dry Stone Walling Day, where anybody could have a try at building a wall. |
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The event was held on the banks of the Ladybower Reservoir in the High Peak area of Derbyshire. We decided to have a try at the ancient art of building a dry stone wall. We arrived at the Fairholmes Visitor Centre bright and early for our attempt at wall building. |
| The wardens had set up two dry stone walls. One of the walls was to remain in place and is going to include a wooden bench, where future visitors can sit and admire the stunning view of Ladybower and the Derwent Dams. |
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The second wall was for practice and demonstrating the art and skill of
dry stone walling. The wardens were extremely informative about walling and gave us excellent instructions before we had our attempt at building some of the wall. |
| I was surprised at the intricacy of building a dry stone
wall and just how time consuming it was. We were told that a good wall builder would only
expect to complete about 2 metres of wall in a day. In a couple of hours we only managed
to achieve about one layer on a two metre length. We were building a straight wall on level ground, but the wardens explained how the angle of the walls (the batter) has to be adjusted when they are built on sloping ground. All of the walls are narrower at the top, than the bottom, and basically consist of two rows of stones with an infill of smaller stones in the middle. However, "throughs" (larger longer stones) also have to be placed at regular intervals to bind the whole wall together. Some of the Derbyshire walls have stood for over 100 years, which reflects the skill and craftsmanship that went into the building of these walls. We now have a much better understanding of the work involved in building the many miles of walls in the Peak District and we are keen to have another try at walling if the opportunity arises. |
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