BCD 2017

T H E B U I L D I N G C O N S E R VAT I O N D I R E C T O R Y 2 0 1 7 105 MASONRY 3.2 DRY STONE WALLING in the 21st CENTURY RICHARD LOVE O FTEN WHEN people think about the craft of dry stone walling, they conjure up an idyllic country landscape of irregular field patterns stretching across the Cotswolds, the Yorkshire Dales or the Lake District. These walls must have been there for hundreds of years, they surmise, and have no contemporary relevance and no one to maintain them in their original condition. Even when practising their craft, wallers find themselves being asked by members of the public ‘Isn’t dry stone walling a dying art?’, as if the evidence of their eyes is simply unbelievable. While the British Isles saw a boom in dry stone walling during the 18th and 19th centuries following the various enclosure acts, dry stone walls and buildings have been constructed in the traditional manner throughout these islands for 5,000 years. Prehistoric sites such as Skara Brae on Orkney demonstrate that whole communities were built using dry stone techniques from very early days and exactly the same methods of construction are used today. Nor do we in the UK have a monopoly on such traditional skills. The craft of dry stone walling has been practised around the world from early times and in some cases these traditions are now being rediscovered and revived. Considering all the modern techniques now available for enclosing livestock that are cheaper to construct and easier to maintain, the disbelief of the public in the survival of the craft is perhaps understandable. So what is its relevance and status in the 21st century and how does it survive as a construction skill in this country against all the odds? CONSTRUCTIONOR LANDSCAPE CRAFT? Although no distinction would necessarily have been made between dry stone walls used in buildings and landscape features in the past, today we feel the need to compartmentalise subjects such as education, training and skills into ever smaller boxes for bureaucratic convenience. This has been a problem for dry stone walling over the past few decades and some people, including practitioners of the craft, classify walling as a landscape heritage skill because that is where most of the features are found. Another group, perhaps seeing stones being laid, either in courses or randomly, classify walling as an extension of brickwork and stonemasonry. In reality, dry stone walling is both of these. However, it is clearly the forerunner to all other modern forms of stone and brick construction because it uses stone in its most natural form, uncut and undressed, as it emerges naturally from the earth. Indeed most early walls, such as those seen around old monastic foundations for example, were constructed from stone cleared off the ground to allow cultivation and construction of small enclosures for animals. Quarrying came along much later, initially on a small, local scale followed by large industrial pits and quarries. More recently, there has been a move within the construction sector to define dry stone walling as coming under ‘Construction Skills’, the sector skills grouping, rather than environmental conservation. Some years ago a working group was asked to put together a National Occupational Standard (NOS), a prerequisite for developing a craft training programme which the UK government will recognise and support. This NOS now sits in the relevant section of the construction skills framework (‘COSVR567 Build Dry Stone Structures’). Regional variations 1: Galloway ‘dyke’, Loch Dornal, South Ayrshire (Photo: DSWAPL/N Coombey)