Commondale

Between Commondale & Kildale on the south side of the road at 634099 is an unusual wall, at least on the NYM. It's single width and unusually has a neat row of copes. But what is more remarkable is the care to ensure that the tops of the copes are level. To achieve this the builder /s have altered the hight of the wall to make sure that each cope ends at the right hight rather than finish the wall level and make sure the copes match!  More recently I've discovered another wall with much larger cope stones at New House Farm, Westerdale.  Look here Westerdale

The Yorkshire Dales

No picture of anything to do with stone in the northern dales would be complete without a barn. Sometimes every field has one. Virtually all of them now have no use for farming. Once used for housing stock and hay in winter these have been replaced by better stock housing in the main farm and baled silage. This one near Muker in upper Swaledale.

The throughstones are tilted downwards so that water runs off the building.

This tiny little bridge is on a path between Muker & Thwaite.

Near Usha Gap between these two villages is one of only two of these I've ever seen. They indicate change of ownership and are two wall heads butted up together.

Typical Dales wall, random rubble, but this one makes use of Gritstone to construct the corner.  The limestone which the rest of the wall is built from is less suitable for corners because its smaller and won't make strong corners.

Mainly limestone but notice the thicker courses in the middle of the wall and also notice the darker brown stone (throughs) which are gritstone which occurs nearbye

This is the same wall as above.  Very neat work.

 (Wood Nook Farm) near Grassington.

Typical Dales wall, Limestone rubble.

The bulge -Sunnyside farm, Fylingthorpe.

Alarming bulge and over a private road entrance & public footpath.

The stick was holding it up!!!

And after about a day and a half - here's the result

Pleased with this.

Lake District Walls

This rather tall wall is in Grisdale. I noticed this one as I returned from a strole up Helvellyin on my way back to Patterdale.

I can't recall the hight but judging from my mountaineering rucksac (40ltr) I'd guess it must be around 10 to 12 ft tall.

This splendid wall must be passed by thousands of walkers in the lake district every year. Its close to a famous pub, The Old Dungeon Ghyll in the Great Langdale Valley.

Grouse Butts

Often just piles of earth or wood barriers. Several estates on the North York Moors build these rather pleasing and functional grouse butts from drystone walls and the tops covered with turfs of heather.

These examples are south of Egton on the Stape road.

They are used so the gun and loader can stand in whilst the driven grouse fly past.

Archaeology find?

This is the third of these I've found this past year.  All on the moorland boundary wall at Howdale.  I thought it was a 'cup-marked-stone', maybe four or five thousand year old. These stones are common enough in the UK, Ireland and elsewhere.

However the archeologist from our national park thought that it was a stone which was used at the base of a base stone socket for a door to swing on - a heel stone. These too were once common in farms/houses and I've even heard of discarded circular grind stones being used for them too in Ireland. I don't think this example was ever been used as the inside was perfectly unworn. It's now recorded and back in the wall it came from.  (Howdale).  There was a very old and partially blocked field entrance in the location where I found it.  These were used before gates were hung using hinges were fixed to stooks using lead.

And here is a cup marked stone.  This one is also from the same wall at Howdale.

There were some archeologists working on Brow Moor, so I took this picture and one of them confirmed it was a cupmarked stone.

This one is back in the wall too.

(The coin is a 50p )

(right)  On the right hand side of this lintel over the sheep creep is a cup and ring marked stone.  Its in the same stretch of wall as the above two examples.  Although I rebuilt this length of wall the same year (2012) as I found these other stones, I only noticed the marks this during the summer this year  when passing by.  (grid ref NZ955016)

Goathland

Quite pleased with this one! Re-used stone supplied by the owner to block off an old concrete entrance way.

His barn had some lovely long gate posts and we selected two to act as posts for a new, much smaller gate entrance.

The farm sign below was set on a large stone cemented in place and it too was partially fixed in place with cement.

If I'd had more time I would have spent it making sure the copes were perfectly level.

The copes were going to be a bit of a problem though as I couldn't see anything amongst the stone he'd gathered and placed where I had asked.

I had noticed and old much smaller and partially removed wall at the back of the house. What remained had reasonable 'half moon' shaped copes. Further away hidden behind more stone were a couple of pallets containing what remained of the copes. We soon estimated that we'd be just about have enough. It turned out we were about five short - and these I made!