There is some interesting thinking coming out of the Conservative party these days. Whether this can be turned into a coherent programme for government, & whether anybody can then articulate a central idea(l) to inspire the voters remains to be seen
One article I saw recently used the dry stone wall as a metaphor for society. In the particular case they were talking of a barn somewhere like Oxfordshire, not a style of building with which I am familiar
The dry stone field wall is a familiar feature of the Pennines, marching over hills & moor to mark out territory & provide protection for the sheep from the weather
The walls are not particularly high – 6 feet would be unusual. As far as I know there is very little dressing of the stones – construction depends on judicious selection & great skill in fitting them together. It is a craft, learned by experience
The mathematics of the dry stone wall must be horrendous. Next to impossible to write down detailed formulae, performance targets & quality checks
The walls are easy to climb, offering numerous hand & foot holds. But they are not reliably stable structures. One learned as a very young child how to judge whether a particular section was safe to climb, how to avoid the disaster of being buried under a mini rock fall
Some animals seemed particularly adept at judging which spot could be charged to make possible their own bid for freedom
These days it is quite likely that dry stone walls, especially those close to human developments, will be mortared, partly for health & safety reasons, partly because the human labour needed to maintain them is a scarce luxury now
One near to me has been daubed with ugly splodges of pinkish mortar. I should like to think this is an attempt to make it look authentically hand crafted by rude forefathers, but I suspect it is just out of penny pinching & poor workmanship
So that’s two kinds of dry stone wall. Then there is Machu Picchu
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