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STONE WALLS

Rebuilding an old dry stone wall on the fell road above Staveley (Stage 1B)

Riding through the Lake District gives ample time to really get to know dry stone walls. Cumbria has an estimated 15,000km (9300 miles) of them, so there is a lot to study. Although some date from earlier times, most were constructed following the Enclosure Act of 1801 to divide up the farming landscape. The fields around farms in the valleys are known as in-bye fields, but the fields up the fellside have been ‘taken’ from the fell and are known as in-take fields. The land above the highest wall is the open fell.

Earlier walls tend to be built from well-rounded stones that retreating ice had left scattered across the landscape, whereas more recent walls were constructed from stone that was quarried in the immediate vicinity and dragged to where they were needed by a horse-drawn ‘slipe’ or sledge. This was not an easy task as each metre of wall requires a ton of stone.

Walls in the Lake District are built with a variety of different types of stone depending on the geology of the location with slate, shale, sandstone, limestone and granites all in common use. Traditionally craftsmen would build a ‘rood’ of wall a day; a measure that varied from seven yards (6.4 metres) down to six yards (5.48 metres) depending on how hard the local stone was to work with.