`Today we'll be doing the random rubble." You might think the random rubble is some kind of obscure ethnic dance, perhaps of a kind favoured by the Flintstones, but in fact the phrase refers to the nature of the dry stone wall I am about to learn how to build.
My instructor is Patrick McAfee, a stonemason and chairperson of Cornerstone, the Irish Centre for Architectural Conservation and Training based in Larchill, Kilcock, Co Kildare. At Cornerstone you can learn how to build a dry stone wall under his patient tuition in a matter of a morning.
Granite, quartzite, basalt, limestone, sandstone: Ireland is chequered with different kinds of stone, Patrick informs us, leading to remarkable variations in the kinds of stone walls to be found all over the country. There are herringbone slate walls in Wexford, feidin walls in east Galway (which have a double layer of stones on the bottom and a single on top) and single-stone walls made of cannonball round granite boulders on the Mourne Mountains (the gaps "slow down the wind" Patrick explains).
Our little group of eight (mostly women) manages to construct a passable double stone wall made largely of horizontally-laid flat hunks of Dublin kalp (limestone quarried from Belgard in Tallaght) in less than two hours. "There's a tight piece of wall," says one instructor, Conor Rush, admiringly. We have built it on a wider, pre-constructed layer of foundation stones, but apparently many dry stone walls are built without foundations.
"The important thing is not the size of the stones but how you've laid them and whether you've overlapped your joints," Patrick notes. He reminds us to lift the stones properly, so as not to hurt our backs - that is, bending down and keeping the head up, so the legs do the lifting. The outside slabs are laid first, with smaller stones put in the centre as filling (the technical term is "hearting"). Every so often you need to put in a "through stone", which goes all the way through the wall, to give it extra strength. The corner stones need to be extra large for the same reason. Patrick shows us how to wedge smaller stones under the big ones to steady them, all the while making sure we stay within the frame created by two wooden stands at each end from which two taut strings extend. When we have built the wall to the level of the strings, we'll know we have finished and can retire to the Larchill Arcadian Farm tea-room for lunch.
"Yez are getting very good," he tells us as we huff and puff and quibble over what slab should sit where. "Hands off, that one's mine," a shrill voice exclaims tetchily. "I need a wedgy one here," says someone else. "It's like putting together a big jigsaw," another voice pipes up cheerfully.
"Some of the best dry stone wallers are women," Patrick reassures us. "Men tend to concentrate on big stones, women on stones that fit the situation." Still, when it comes to "coping" our finished product with huge slabs laid on their ends, we stand back and let Patrick and Conor do the heave-ho work. We ooh and aah over our wall, which is a work of art, with its subtle shadings of blues and greys and pattern of flat, interleaving shapes. It has taken eight of us to build it in 90 minutes. A skilled dry stone waller can build a wall six yards long, five feet high and two feet wide in a day, says Patrick (that is, with a willing sidekick to feed the stones). "It's a good, reasonable wall," he comments on our morning's effort, casting his expert eye over it. He notes that the facing could have been flatter, and there are too many "joints over joints". Still, it is a solid structure that would take more than a kick to knock over, and we haven't used a scrap of mortar or cement.
Patrick notes that the art of dry stone walling is a dying one, and that modern stone walls are made with cement and are not attractive: "Modern stone walls of the kind you see a lot around Dublin are ugly, like vertical crazy paving," he comments. He has been teaching people how to build proper dry stone walls for some time now, and his craft is very much appreciated by the denizens of west Kerry: "The people there want to do it right."
The history of dry stone built structures is an ancient one in Ireland, he reminds us, citing Newgrange as an example, although most of the dry stone walls here were built only 150 years ago, when the Rundale Village system of open farming broke up. Many were built during the Famine.
Meanwhile, when it comes to the workshops he gives, he has noted certain "personality traits" emerging among the mixed groups of architects, homeowners and landscapers who come to do his courses: "If you lead, the others have to fit their stones around the ones you have laid."
After our toils we have the prospect of a stroll through the Larchill Arcadian garden which has 10 18th-century follies, a lake with two islands and rare breeds of farm animals. The latter include a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig who has just disgraced herself by escaping from her pen to romp with an ordinary, common sort of pig, and then producing a litter of non-thoroughbred banbhs. Clearly, her pen will have to be reconstructed with a stout dry stone wall, built by experts such as ourselves.
Workshops on dry stone walling, lime washing, pointing and more are on offer at Cornerstone throughout the year. Tel: 01- 6284518.
Patrick McAfee has written about the history and craft of his work in a new book called Irish Stone Walls (O'Brien, £14.99).
`Some of the best dry stone wallers are women'
