Sheep Hole Isle of Man

This is for anoraks only. A family get together on the IOM resulted in me spotting this beauty.

It's a sheep hole, (I don't know what they are called in the IOM)

But it is the only one I've ever seen in a wall built of vertically placed stone!

It is just a short walk on the coastal path out of Port Erin.

Meanwhile I met a farmer from the other side of the moors here in North Yorkshire (Farndale) and his local word for these holes was, "pop holes" which I'd never heard of before.

Historic Wheelhouse

The phone call was from a builder I didn't know but he told me he had got my name from someone I'd done some walling for. "Would I be interested in rebuilding/repairing some walling on a wheelhouse" up near Commondale?" s Mmmmmm intersting!

Wheelhouses are relatively uncommon in the North York Moors and were built so horses could drive machinery such as threshing machines. This one at West House Farm is much the same as others, in that it worked by the horse walking in circles turning a drive shaft just below the ground turned various pulleys which in turn powered whatever farm machinery was being used.
On the left is the wheelhouse and rather rough and uneven stonework, some of which was falling down.
All the ones I've seen were built with sides. This one was originally constructed with open sides which had at sometime been filled with drystone work. The farmer had lived there for over 47 years and they'd always been there he said.   Why were the gaps between the columns filled in? The farmer thought that it was unlikely that a horse would be able to work in winter during the bad weather on this relatively exposed open site close to the moors. Perhaps it was originally built 'on the cheap', but then filled in when it's faults were discovered.

And here it is 4 days later after my attentions.
Well it's hard to see the difference but I had deliberately tried to ensure the outer stones were reused with their weathered surfaces showing again.

The whole building had been reroofed, keeping as much of the original timbers as possible. Bat roosting holes were provided under the ridge stones and accessed through small holes left by the builder who used lime mortar throughout.

The owner is now going to removed the tons of sheep dung from inside now it's also been empted of assorted tractor tyres and other vintage unwanted old farming machinery!

Browside - medieval boundary

This wall, part of which I've rebuilt on the right is on the ancient medieval boundary between the Strickland estate and the adjoining private farm lands. It consists of the ditch, seen here on the left and the wall on top of the bank and falls steeply away on the far side.

For some reason the copes on most of the wall are triangular shape but on either side of the old entrance to the farm they are replaced by neat blocks - some of which I've had to manufacture. 


A short distance away on Browside is this wall I built a year ago.  Notice the huge field clearance boulder.  Over the years the owner had collected several large boulders from the fields he was 'improving'.  I persuaded him to push it into place using a large digger.  I rather like it!   






And this is what it looks like on the field side. Impossible to climb whether you are a sheep or beast.

Local Copes

This wall is part of a boundary for Swallow Farm near Fylingthorpe and is not far from the historic park wall. What is unusual is the cope is the only example I've come across of this kind of cope which consists of large upright copes placed regularily amongst normal copes. These uprights contain both holes and notched stones. Initially i thought the notched holes were simply broken holes but now believe that the holes were for trimmed lengths of timber to go into and the notches would have held any untrimmed lengths of wood such as hazel in place. Or could it simply have been for victorian wire?

North Yorks Moors Walls

Walls on the North Yorkshire moors can be divided into two styles.
a) Double wall, which as the picture left shows, a wall built with two separate sides of stone. and

b) Single wall as shown in the lower picture which consists of a single stones placed on top of each other. These are common on remoter farms and moorland

Walls here are basically sandstone in the northern part of the park and oolitic limestone in the southern half.;

Copes, (the top row of stones) pronounced "corpse" locally, consist mainly of large slabs placed flat, irregular blocks placed on their sides or regular blocks of varying quality as the top photo shows.

Walls vary in height from 4ft to 5ft and start at around 27"wide at the base.

Almost all walls using cut stone are set in place traced which means instead of being put with their length into the wall, they are placed brick fashion, lengthways along the wall. This is common practice.

Whilst most of our wall have quite thick stone this wall on the Whitby Scarborough road has quite thin and square stone. It is the only example I know like this here although I have seen similar stone in upper Swaledale in the Yorkshire Dales.

Buck & Doe coping on a wall near KirkMoor beck on the Scarborough Whitby Rd.

This type of cope is rather rare anywhere on the North Yorkshire Moors

Irish Drystone Walls

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.


More about Irish Stone walls and/or Ditches as they are called, here:- https://david-perry.tripod.com/id4.html

Stooks - Gate Posts

Just above the National Trust campsite in Great Langdale in Cumbria I found this old example of a gate entrance. Round holes on one side and square ones on the other. Don't quite know why they are different but...... They look nice.

Stoops or Gate Posts now hang gates. But a long time ago gates consisted of five or six wood poles inserted into holes in the stoops. In this part of North Yorkshire these are almost always consist of a horizontal rebate with aright angle turn downwards to hold the wooden pole.(see below)

This is the only example of a post with a curved rebate I've seen. Note also that the top rebate is coming from the other field side of the gate. This makes it difficult for cattle to lift them off. This example is immediately west of Bransdale Mill.






This is the normal stoop with 5 rebates for rails. This well preserved stoop with holes on the other side of the opening is near Glaisdale on the old road/track leading from the ford at the railway bridge. Notice the superb wall seperating Arncliffe woods from the field.