Some elements of our landscape are so common that we cease to notice them. Field boundaries are a good example. From the earliest days of settlement with the advent of farming around 2,500BC fields had to be enclosed, at first with simple boundary markers but increasingly with stock-proof barriers. Some were hedges, anywhere round here named 'Hey' or 'Hague' was originally a hedged enclosure, that's the origin of the name. Eventually in the North the most efficient and durable solution was the dry stone wall.
I can show you examples of crude walls built from rounded erratic stone cleared from fields during cultivation that have survived for over 800 years but the majority of our walls are more recent than that and made with fragmented stone from just below the surface which has sharp contours and can be worked into a far more regular construction by a skilled waller. I'm pleased to see that many people are going on dry-walling courses and learning the essential elements of the craft. A well made wall with the correct batter (Taper towards the top) and good 'throughs', the larger stones which span the whole width of the wall and in a good wall are laid touching sides with each other, is a joy to see and will last for hundreds of years with minimal attention. One thing we tend to forget is that this basic skill was the foundation of house building in stone which became ubiquitous in this area in the mid 16th century after the masons were made redundant with the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Improvements like dressing stone and the use of mortar gave us our unique townscape where almost every house is built with local stone, in our case the tough grit-stone quarried to the South of Barlick at Tubber Hill and Salterforth.
The last explosion of field walling round here was during the Enclosures of the Waste in the mid-nineteenth century. Many miles of wall had to be built very quickly and if truth be told, some by unskilled labourers and consequently of poor quality. The stone for these walls was dug up on site from small delphs (Origin of the word is 'delve', to dig) along the line of the wall. You can still see traces of these today. The farmhouses that were built on the new enclosures used the same source of stone and it's noticeable that it was always carried downhill and for as short a distance as possible. It was only later, during building in the town that horse transport of stone became common. Out on the moor the most common conveyance was a sledge and these were only practical if the load was being brought downhill.
Even today stone plays a big part in our lives and there is a good market for reclaimed stone from demolished buildings. The most valuable of all is 'grey' slate, local stone slate and good flag stones. So recognise our asset and let the stones talk to you!
Erratic and dressed stone dry walls at Hayn Slack.
