‘Jack of all trades and master o’none’ was one of my dad’s sayings when I was growing up. I remember him saying it quite often but can’t for the life of me remember in what context. Anyway it could certainly apply to me when it comes to dry stone walling. It’s one of those jobs that I find myself having to do every now and then when a bit of walling comes down. Each time I am forced into having another go at it I always find myself thinking that I should go on a course and learn how to do it properly. Unfortunately I’ve never found the time so am left making it up as I go along.
The latest section was washed down in the recent heavy rains. We actually had what looked like a river flowing across my neighbours garden and straight through the wall. It held for a day or two but finally gave in and collapsed. The pile of stone has been laid there a few weeks now whilst I’ve kept putting off the job in favour of other tasks.
I remember my dad building low dry stone retaining walls in the garden of one of my childhood homes with stone that he found strewn around the plot. Whilst he was working he told me it was a job he sometimes had to do underground down the pit. He’s the only coal miner I’ve heard talk about this although I know that our childhood slang words for a stone – packer or macker came from the mines. A ‘packer’ I assume was a stone used for packing in a retaining wall, ‘macker’ I’m not sure, maybe just a derivative. We used either without preference as kids, ‘chucking mackers in t’canal’ or ‘chucking packers in t’canal’ was equally acceptable.
Talking of childhood slang used in Yorkshire did you know many of our slang words actually came from the Vikings? As children we often used the phrase ‘lakin out’ to describe playing out. In our house this could only be done out of earshot of my mum who liked to be a bit posher than the average Yorkshire lass. We had to speak properly and ‘lakin’ was definitely not properly! It was only when I started to spend some time in Norway as an adult and discovered that ‘Laken’ is Norwegian for play that I did a bit of research and found many of our Yorkshire words had Viking origins, Ginnel being another one we often used. Strange to think that we are still using words left behind by the Vikings over a thousand years ago, passed from child to child over all those centuries. But I digress….
Back to the wall. I started by taking what was left of the wall down to ground level as what was remaining was leaning at quite a jaunty little angle. The stones were laid out around me with all the smaller infill bits piled up separately. It is then just a case of selecting stones individually that fit. Using the larger stones first, trying different pieces out to see what works best and packing here and there with smaller slithers to prevent rocking. The wall was double sided with smaller stones being used as infill. Several of the larger stones were used across ways to tie the two sides together. When i had reached the desired height the remaining stones were placed cross ways as coping.
The whole job was accompanied by a strong smell of garlic as I repeatedly stood on a patch of wild garlic that grows under the trees where the wall came down which just added to the pleasure of being outside in spring.
Now I’m sure that any professional dry stone waller would look at my walling in despair but for me I have to say I’m quite pleased with the result. It does the job and I think it looks quite reasonable. I would still like to learn how to do it properly one day but for now I’ll just have to keep on doing what I keep on doing.
