I have been working on the wall that lines Hagg Wood today. Down in the bottom corner by the gate. Unfortunately, this wall is in pretty bad shape and the small wall that backs onto the road is pretty precarious.
It took me a while to trim back all of the holly just to be able to get to the road. The soil is much higher here, but a bit of investigation with a pick axe revealed that it was a pile of stones – presumably fallen off the wall – rather than soil. You can see from the picture below that there was a lot of stone hidden under the grass. Clearing the holly and finding the stones took most of the day. The heat (around 30C) was pretty intense and even in the shade it was hard work.
I spent an hour or so at the end of the day and rebuilt the top section on the smaller wall that runs along the road. Although it still bows a bit, it is a lot more solid than before. I did look back through my archive photos and managed to find a picture of the wall before I “fiddled” with it!
There is a little more to dig out tomorrow and then hopefully I can finish this bottom section of wall and move up to the other end of the bottom field.
The wall is in pretty bad shape here, but most of the stone seemed to be buried in the grass!
Apparently, Lurchers don’t do dry stone walling. That is for Jack Russells!
This section of wall was looking pretty precarious. There is still a bit of a bow in it, but the large dodgey stones on the top have been sorted out. Note to self: Make sure you put your steel toe cap boots on before playing with a wall in this state.
I managed to find this photo in my archive and it shows what the wall used to look like.