It has been very wet recently and that area around where I have been working is very muddy and slippery. I have decided not to do any dry stone walling here while it is so wet – a slip in the mud carrying a large stone could very easily spell disaster.
With such much wall to repair around the property, I thought I would turn my attention to a spot that needed to be repaired. In the top field, there is a piece of wall where the coping stones are only just clinging on. I haven’t attempted just to repair a section of wall before, so I didn’t really know what to expect. The key factor seems to limit the amount of wall that needs to be repaired! As soon as I removed a couple of the coping stones, a whole section of wall collapsed. You need to have your wits about you and do wear a pair of steel toe cap boots.
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| The section of wall needing repair. This photo was taken last summer. |
I put the coping stones to one side. Separated out the building stones and put the hearting (there was a lot of it) in a wheel barrow. All in all, it only took an hour to rebuild. The most difficult thing was finding enough coping stones to cover the top of the wall. I found some of them buried in the grass (this wall must have started falling about some time ago) and a few others elsewhere.
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| The repaired wall – a few more running joints that I really wanted, but I didn’t want to have to rebuild a huge section |