Free-standing and Retaining Dry Stone Wall Build in Bankfoot, Perthshire.

As a drystone waller there are projects that become instant favourites. This might be because you’re working with a favourite stone type or building special features or the job site might be in an incredible location.

This project was particularly interesting to me as it was to be built with field stone sourced from opposite the property, and it included very large feature stones. In field walling, immovable boulders were often built over and incorporated into the wall purely through necessity. In this case, the client wanted the feature stones and fortunately had the means to move them into place. I only placed a few myself. Again, these were sourced from fields opposite the property.

These huge stones being incorporated into walls is a style that’s hundreds of years old. On the left is an example of a lichen covered boulder being incorporated into the walls of a ruined Blackhouse in Allean Forest. On the right is some of the building I did to fit around one of these feature stones.

It might be a while before I get to build around such impressive boulders again, as they are often hard to find, removal can be difficult and transport to the job site is often tricky plus you need large machinery to position them!

After 26m of freestanding drystone wall was completed, a retaining wall was constructed. The retaining wall consumed at least twenty-five tons of stone. The biggest and most unmanageable stone was used to build this wall, as it can work well in a retaining wall situation. A mini-excavator was used to get the foundations in place and even to lift many of the stones onto the wall as it went up, where they were jimmied into place with the digger bucket.