Ireland has the greatest variation in wall than any other country I'm aware. The picture above is from County Clare in the west and this wall is constructed from large slabs of Lisscannor limestone. Like many Irish walls (There called ditches in Ireland) they are filled with till/clay.
In the south west of Ireland especially on and around the Mizen and the Beara peninsular walls are built by placing the stones vertically. This demands a totally different thought process for the waller as demonstrated here on this slope where the builder has had to place longer slabs into the wall to prevent the higher part of the wall sliding down. This builder as is quite normal hasn't got any copes on top but you do sometimes see these walls with a neat top of copes.To read more:-
This article is based on my observations over ten years living in the southwest of Ireland in County Cork and was originally written for Sean Adcock of the NorthWales branch of the DSWA.
The article as originally written is available as a pdf file here
County Clare in SW Ireland has a landscape similar to the limestone areas of the Yorkshire dales.
Here is a new wall built around 1992 from a combination of field gathered boulders and the copes of limestone slabs from the limestone 'pavement'
Although this might appear to be an untidy example of drystone walling, building with irregular stones such as these is extremely skilled.
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