I was again looking at the local dry stone walls and I noticed that some of the newer ones seemed to be falling down more often than the older ones. I spoke to one of the wallers and he told me that the old methods using just the stones themselves seemed to be going out of fashion. The new methods seemed to be just putting the stones in willy nilly and then using cement to keep them in place. During the snowy season recently the water permeates the cement, freezes and then when it warms up it cracks and the bonds break, and the walls fall down! It is apparantly much quicker to build this way and does not need the years of experience in dry stone walling. So maybe I was wrong about the old crafts - or maybe not so many people wanting to learn the long and laborious process of creating the work of art that is a dry stone wall
cheers
mystic mog
A BRIEF HISTORY OF CHIPPY TEA
3 years ago
There are a lot of dry stone walls in my area (Central Kentucky, USA), built back in the 18th century. Local lore says that most of them were built by Irish laborers, since the local landowners didn't want to risk the health of their slaves (which they paid good money for) on the task. Apparently, building a good dry stone wall is literally a back-breaking task...
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