After whetting their appetites for building with stone, people also wonder what comes next. As wallers say, every wall comes to an end, a cheek end! Why not apply what you’ve learned in an intro workshop while learning to build a wall end? For other options, why not peruse our Curriculum in Dry Stone? Anyone…
The St Kilda island group lies about 40 miles west of the Hebridean island of North Uist. Village Bay, on the southeast corner of Hirta, the largest island, has a wealth of stonework. The head dyke quite clearly separates the arable ground from the hill pasture. The other main feature is the line of the…
In 1997 when I was wandering the British Isles researching “Dry Stone Walling” I stumbled across a strange structure in Kielder forest, a 4m tall corbelled dry stone building housing a camera obscura, built as part of Visual Arts UK 1996 in the North of England, the same project that was the genesis of Goldsworthy’s…
In Amorgos, the easternmost island of the Cyclades, on a crest at 262 metres above sea level, to the north-east of Hora and to the south-west of Aegiali, lies Asfontylitisi, a settlement used only at intervals, wholly built in dry stone (Fig.1). One could say that Asfontylitis is not really a settlement but rather a…
There are estimated to be 9000 km of dry-stone retaining structures in the UK lining the road and rail network[1], mostly dating to the 19th and 20th centuries. Though poorly constructed walls presumably collapsed shortly after their construction, the majority of walls have remained perfectly stable over decades of usually steadily increasing loading and weathering…
Brian Post shows how to use feathers and wedges (aka wedges and shims) to split stone. This detailed video will take you through setup, what sizes to use, spacing and layout, drilling, history and much more as we split down granite blocks to make through stones and cheek end material. This video is full of…
