The Dry Stone walling bucket list
When I first started dry stone walling many moons ago, I was happy to just be out there on the hill farms repairing walls. It was such a relief to be doing something I enjoyed after years trying and failing to find a career in the world of desk jockeys. Dry stone waller sounded like a very fine job title to me. Marketing Executive, Secretariat Assistant and Faculty Officer just never did.
After working on sheep farms and training and practicing, I hooked up with professional walls and began to learn about the application of my craft in garden landscaping settings.
I learned.
When I first started dry stone walling many moons ago, I was happy to just be out there on the hill farms repairing walls. It was such a relief to be doing something I enjoyed after years trying and failing to find a career in the world of desk jockeys. Dry stone waller sounded like a very fine job title to me. Marketing Executive, Secretariat Assistant and Faculty Officer just never did.
After working on sheep farms and training and practicing, I hooked up with professional walls and began to learn about the application of my craft in garden landscaping settings.
I learned about curved walls, low retaining walls, steps, mixing cement and laying slabs.
And then I went out on my own and added design and landscape gardener to my resume.
And over the years I’ve slowly added to my catalogue of what I’ve built. After completing a dry stone bridge recently, I had the sudden realisation that I had unknowingly ticked off another key item on my bucket list.
The bucket list
The definition of a bucket list is “a number of experiences or achievements that a person hopes to have or accomplish during their lifetime.”
I never set out to have a list of achievements but if I was to set out a bucket list it may look something like this:
- Build a dry stone bridge;
- Work on a show garden at the Chelsea Flower show in London;
- Work on a film set;
- Help repair stonework on a world heritage site;
- Build walls in other countries;
- Build a high profile or very visible structure;
- Earn a pinnacle award or a certificate of Merit from the Dry Stone Walling Association;
- Make a moongate
- Work with a garden designer on a big project;
One thing I have never wanted to achieve is Dry Stone Walling certification. I know a lot of wallers talk about the sense of achievement of getting their Advanced but it’s just never been important to me.
A bridge – this Alston stone bridge was built in the Spring of 2023 on a property in Fife, Scotland.
The arch span is 1.6m and the total length was 6m
Chelsea Flower Show – The garden designer Jane Porter asked me to be the lead waller on projects in 2022 and 2023.
The Still Garden was a small container/balcony garden, built with a vertically laid slate wall. It won the Gold medal and best in class in 2022.
The Choose Love garden involved making a pitched stone path using Purbeck limestone. It won a Silver gilt medal this year.
Six years ago I led a team of dry stone wallers building a series of farm yard features on the set of the big budget Netflix movie “The Outlaw King”.
In 2022, I spent a memorable 10 days repairing various structures on St Kilda, a world heritage site 60 miles to the west of Lewis in the Western Isles.
I’ve been lucky to take my walling skills to Norway, Canada, Spain and the USA.
I spent several weeks last autumn building this viewing point on the North Downs Way in Surrey.
It’s not only high (600ft above sea-level) but also next to one of England’s premier long distance walking paths.
The bucket list that I never set out to create has suddenly in the past 18 months become something, with lots of items ticked off.
I’m still looking for a decent project to be considered for a DSWA award, and I’m always interested in looking for different types of work.