The Groundhog day wall – Fife

This job in Fife took a lot of effort. 45m of wall. A bell-mouth entrance. 700 hand-made copes. Curves, cheek-ends and changing heights.

Stone that was hard to work and lots of it.

The poor quality of much of the stone required way more work than I had anticipated. What looked like good stone turned out to be full of fissures and hidden cracks. Pieces would break in my hands; and big sections of stone were nearly impossible to break into smaller, usable pieces. I had to borrow a hydraulic stone cropper to produce useful stone.

It added to the build time.

The job was more than an hour from my house, so traveling time was a factor. The closure of the Forth Road Bridge and subsequent long diversions for the last month of the job added to the difficulties!

Sometimes it seemed like it would never get done – hence the Groundhog day name!

I was really pleased to get finished, but I was also really pleased with the finished wall. It was a lot of effort, but hopefully it was worth it!