By Raelene Marshall.
Last year I was fortunate to spend a day at the DSWA headquarters in Lane Farm Crooklands, near Milnthorpe in the Lakes District. Words cannot describe the beauty of this landscape in autumn, an area where I had lived and come to love several years earlier. I was delighted to be back.
The DSWA of GB promotes a greater understanding and knowledge of the traditional craft of dry stone walling and to encourage the repair and maintenance of dry stone walls throughout the country.
As well as the original agrarian dry stone walls on the farm, walling teams from all over the county have constructed a linear stretch of vernacular sections of dry stone walls that represent the stone and craftsmanship styles of each particular area. Although not identical, these sections of walls give the visitor a taste of the S shaped Millennium Wall Project located in Wirksworth Derbyshire, an open-air museum of the stones and styles of dry stone walls that shape the countryside across Great Britain.
Elsewhere on Lane Farm is a dedicated area where young wallers who have gone through a selection process are funded to learn all aspects of the dry stone the craft from qualified wallers dedicated to sharing their skills.
Photograph above shows a random stones training wall with lunky hole (sometimes cripple hole or smout).
