A few years ago, my church replaced its flagstone floor in the entryway with stone tiles. The removed stones were stacked outside the building and people were invited to help themselves. My husband and I ended up taking enough home to construct a retaining wall on a hillside garden that had continually been tumbling down into our neighbor’s yard.
Having never built a stone wall before, we didn’t know anything about technique, but even with our lack of expertise, the wall has become an attractive and useful element of our front yard. The dirt from the hillside stays put on the hillside now. Over time, the wall has settled into its place, both figuratively and literally. Plants climb over the top, squirrels hide nuts in its crevices. I feel good that we made use of something considered waste product (and therefore free to us!) and that we have a little bit of church sanctuary in our backyard.
Dry stone walls, made without mortar or other gluing agent, have been around for a very long time. In Scotland, there are dry stone walls which are around 5000 years old, built during the Stone Age. Mayan ruins in Belize were built in the 8th or 9th century AD. The Great Enclosure in Zimbabwe was built in the 13th or 14th century.
Dry stone walls are extremely sustainable. Traditionally made with stones near at hand, stone walls have often served the dual purposes of providing a way to clear the land of stones for farming as well as being a way to delineate borders and keep specific creatures either inside our outside particular spaces.
Dry stone building is a craft that was traditionally handed down within families, but declined after WWII when the world shifted to modern engineering ideas and techniques, and the use of concrete. Concrete is now the most widely used construction material on Earth, but brings inherent problems. Its production is responsible for 9% of global industrial water withdrawals and 8% of of global carbon dioxide emissions. Groups from all around the world are advocating for another look at the dry stone walling craft which, among other benefits, requires no production plants and just a few, uncomplicated tools.
In 2018, UNESCO declared dry stone walling as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, stating that “the technique exemplifies a harmonious relationship between human beings and nature.”
Dry stone walls depend on the skill of the builder and natural forces of gravity and resistance. They are slightly flexible, which allows their foundations to settle without damage. Done correctly, the sides tilt slightly inward, which means that ground movement tightens the structure rather than making it fall apart.
Because of these characteristics, dry stone walls last longer than mortared walls. Frozen rain get trapped within the seams of mortared walls and pushes joints apart, but water drains naturally from a correctly built dry stone wall. Mortared walls need to be redone roughly every 15 to 30 years, but some dry stone walls have lasted thousands of years. Neither concrete nor mortared rock is easily recyclable, meaning that new material needs to be brought in, but repairing a dry stone wall typically just requires the labor of re-stacking the original material. In fact, entire stone walls are moveable if someone is ambitious enough.
Stone walls are more than just a barrier—they provide habitat for an amazing variety of flora and fauna. Because they have many small nooks and crannies, with pockets of air and moisture, they are “in effect, one huge linear nature reserve.” Lichen, mosses, and ferns grow on and between the rocks; small creatures such as mice nest in the gaps, bees and other pollinators visit the flowers. The damp crevices are particularly appealing to amphibians such as frogs and salamanders. Insects, a key of sign of biodiversity, typically move in as soon as the wall is constructed.
Although some creatures prefer a stone wall in disrepair, there are limits. Once the height is reduced by more than half, the habitat value becomes considerably reduced. So it is important for many reasons, to keep stone walls in repair.
For those wanting to learn the craft, there are many workshops around the world, from Japan to the UK to the US. Although it takes a long time to become an expert at the craft, it takes much less time to learn the basics of dry stone building, from creating the trench, to layering the stones, to including the tie-through stones and coping stones that keep it all together and in place.
The pleasure comes from both the work itself and what is created. According to one Scottish dry stone wall builder, “when you’re building a stone wall, you become part of the environment. Brown hares will just come up and stop and watch you.”
Aesthetically, stone walls blend with the environment visually because they come from it. As one master dry stone waller put it, "“When we find ourselves surrounded by natural materials, I think there’s a feeling of relief. But it can be hard to explain to people why they’re going to enjoy that stone wall so much more than a stucco wall. You just have to feel it.”
Once the basic skills are mastered, there is a lot of room for creativity within the craft. Andy Goldsworthy, who I have written about before, is a great example of getting creative with this ancient skill.
If you don't have the inclination to build a wall yourself, maybe sitting beside one and watching the activity surrounding it will be enjoyment enough.
Feel free to leave a comment below (you can sign in through your email) or contact me directly at louise.conner@circlewood.online.
Louise