George's Notes
One skill which is becoming harder year by year to see practised is that of dry-stone walling – that is, building walls without using any bonding material. There are many excellent examples of this work, still in good condition, surrounding some of our upland pastures on the Pennines, particularly in South East Lancashire – these walls were set up when the land was first enclosed. Patterns vary from place to place, involving the placing of ‘headers’ and ‘stretchers’, the presence or not of ‘throughs’ and the style of coping or ’toppers’, called cocks and hens round Rochdale.
On farmland such as we find around this area, where it is uneconomical to fence with posts and wire or not possible to grow clos-set hedges, dry-stone walls are the perfect answer if firmly set, since they are weatherproof and almost everlasting.
George Mainwaring
