I'd been rebuilding & replacing the partially concrete block and stone wall in front of our house when a local builder asked if I'd built it. "Could you do house stonework?" he asked. I told him, probably but I'd never done house walling. "No problems I'll start you off and you can take as long as want". (Dunmanus near Goleen, on the Mizzen peninsular, Co Cork) Built 2023.
Most Irish houses since the 1050s were built of two 'skins', of 4" concrete blocks and plastered. If you wanted stonework then unlike the UK where cut stone was used on the outside skin, in Ireland they were mostly clad in stone, this needed a 1ft of concrete foundation to accommodate the outer stonework. Many of the garden walls also made of concrete block on one side and stonework on the other:-
The stones for this house were mostly field stone collected from a newly created farmer's field with the addition of stone from a local quarry. The depth of stone was normally around 8" to 1' maximum. The two blanked out windows I added to break up the large expanse of gable end. To give future owners something to puzzle over, I deliberately put them at the level of the ground floor ceiling level and 2nd ceiling level. The stone work was cemented, using a 1:4 ration of sand to cement and the cement was used was mixed with only enough water so it wouldn't slump when tipped out for use. This was so no cement leached out when drying and also enabled the joints to be raked out and brushed out using a 1" paintbrush.
The stone was sandstone.
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BELOW
I built the gate entrance at the same the same time. The walls were built with a core of 4" concrete blocks and faced with stone on both sides. I made sure you could see no cement and the photo taken about 10 years later shows ferns/flowers growing out out of the entrance way. The stone used here was also also a very local sandstone similar to slate. It split easily but couldn't be broken across the grain without a great deal of shattering.
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