The following week starting the 2nd July was a week of stone, earth, water and warmth. We had the pleasure of the company of Ken, who was our tutor in Irish dry stone wall building. So we shared our time between continuing the cobbing, and working with Ken building a retaining wall to hold the bank around the back of the main house. We learnt that stones have a language and different characters. Some soft, some hard. Some misbehave and need some shaping and persuading. But when they are happy they fit together well.
We built the wall with Urbanite and used slate to level up the face stones and smaller stone from on-site here for the hearting or Coring.
So firstly we Dug a foundation trench which we made level horizontally, but with a sloping back to it. So that when the Urbanite was laid onto the area we had dug into the bank, it sloped at a downward angle toward the side of the hill. So as you stand back and look at the wall, the front of the face stones is level and then the back of the stones were lower. The wall we built was called a single retaining wall. Retaining walls are all built at an angle sloping back into the hillside. (1ft in for every 6ft up) The term for this is that "the face is battered back toward the bank.
The first team used a simple profile set up using 2 wooden posts that were fixed together at 1 end. Then one was driven into the bank and the other post into the ground in front of where the wall was built. These were set up using a profile that ken brought with him that gave us the correct angle/batter of the wall. We chose the biggest stones for the first or foundation layer, (Mother stones) to give us a solid base to work from, then built up from there. Where possible we laid the Urbanite, with the best face outward and then stretching back as far into the wall as possible, (these are called the bond stones.) We tried to find through stones where we could, which span the whole depth of the wall, but as it was a retaining wall. we only needed to have one good face on them.
So we started by choosing the Urbanite that was to form the face of the wall. We looked for the right one that would fit next to the one previously laid, then like looking for the next piece of a jigsaw, we filled in the area behind with as big bits of Urbanite as we could find that fit the best into the space. We used small bits of slate and flat stones that we split or cleaved to fit under the Urbanite, or sometimes on top; (These stones are called pinnings.) This left us with a flat surface to each course/layer of the wall, which we would then build from for the next course. The next process was hearting, this is where you fill the spaces between the Urbanite or main bigger building stone,s with small stones sometimes called clinkers. These were pushed into the gaps to fill in as much of the empty space as possible. But they were never hammered, or forced into position though, and once they were all in place they created a rigidity to the wall that linked it all together, and stopped any possible movement.
As we built higher, one of the main rules in Irish stone walling is to stagger the joints between the stones, so that you can only ever have 2 stones on top of each other next to one of the same height, but never 3 stones. As we came along the wall we built in a Romford fireplace and a stone seat for 2 before it curved around the corner gently to the end.
I think after this week of stone-working we all had a greater appreciation of the stone structures, buildings, and walls we see around us, and those that built them.
Timmy also joined us this week and did another cob mix for us with his digger, as well as some landscaping of the bank at the end of the wall.
A few of us also were working on building a pole lathe in our spare time, which was starting to take shape.
Onwards and upwards. Over and out. (: Cheers and gone. :)
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