Why the Dales Walls Still Stand

There is no mortar in a dry stone wall. Nothing holds it up but gravity, friction and the judgement of whoever built it. Walk almost anywhere in the Yorkshire Dales and you are walking through the work of generations of wallers — thousands of miles of boundary laid stone on stone since the enclosure acts. A well-built wall will stand for a century or more without a hand laid on it. A badly built one will start to sag before the first winter is out.

Gapping up, as the repair of a broken section is known locally, is one of the most satisfying jobs in the countryside. It is slow, quiet, physical work, and it teaches you to look at stone properly. You will not finish in an afternoon, and you should not try to.

Tools, Weather and a Sensible Start

You need less than you might think. A waller's hammer — two pounds or so, with a chisel edge on one side and a flat face on the other — is the essential tool. Add thick leather gloves, safety glasses, sturdy boots with a decent tread, a spade, a pry bar for shifting stubborn stones, and a ball of string with a few short pegs to run a line along the wall.

Choose a dry spell. Wet stone is heavy, slippery and treacherous, and limestone in particular turns greasy after rain. Work in daylight, tell someone where you are going, and never work alone on a steep bank. Lift with your legs; some of those foundation stones will weigh more than you expect, and a strained back is the traditional end to a good day's walling.

Sorting the Stones by Size

Before you place a single stone, take the broken section apart carefully and sort what you find. This is the part beginners rush, and it is the part that decides whether the wall will hold.

• Foundation stones — the largest, flattest, most solid pieces. Keep these to one side; they go back in first.
• Face stones — roughly rectangular, with at least one good flat face. These make the two outer skins of the wall.
• Hearting — the small stuff, fist-sized and under. Nothing is wasted; this fills the middle.
• Through-stones — long, flat stones that can span the full width of the wall. Rare and precious. Set them apart.
• Coping stones — heavy, wedge-shaped pieces with a flat top and bottom. These crown the finished wall.

Lay the turf and topsoil to one side as you strip the old wall back. You will want it for the finishing touches, and it saves the grass beside you from being buried under spoil.

Foundations and the Two Faces

Dig out a shallow trench down to firm, undisturbed subsoil — not soft topsoil, which will settle and shift. Make it about 15cm wider than the finished wall on each side, so the base stones sit on solid ground with their edges buried.

Bed the largest foundation stones first, flat face down, wide side out. They must sit dead solid; rock a stone with your hand and it will rock under frost for years. Then build the two faces together, course by course, never running one side up to full height before the other.

Give the wall its batter — the inward lean that gives it strength. Roughly 10cm of lean for every metre of height is about right, and your string line will keep you honest. As you build, follow the old rule: never set a joint directly over a joint below. Lay one stone across two, and two across one, so the weight is spread outwards and down.

Fill the middle with hearting as you go, a handful at a time, packed tight so the faces cannot move. A wall without good hearting is a shell, and a shell will not last.

Through-Stones and the Height of the Wall

Every metre or so of height, bed a through-stone right across the width of the wall, tying the two faces together like a brace. These are what stop a wall bulging outwards, and they are the reason a Dales wall can take a gale off the fell without flinching.

Keep the courses level and roughly even in height, and keep the whole run consistent with the wall either side — where new meets old, the stones need to interlock one for one, or the join will open up. Field walls in the Dales generally finish somewhere around 1.2 to 1.4 metres: high enough to hold sheep, low enough to lean on while you catch your breath.

Coping Stones and the Finishing Touch

The coping is the wall's hat, and it is what sheds the rain away from the joints below. Traditionally these stones are set on edge, upright and packed tightly side by side, sometimes leaning slightly to one side of the wall, sometimes set in alternating pairs.

Stand each cope on its flattest edge, tap it down firmly with the hammer until it is rock solid, and keep the row running true. Where a cope is too wide, trim it rather than force it. Finally, press the saved turf back along the base of the wall and tread it down gently. Rake the ground clear, step back, and look at what you have made.

It will not match the old work perfectly. Nobody's does. But if you have sorted your stones properly, built your foundations true and set your coping tight, that wall will still be standing when someone else is writing about it.