GARDENS:The stone that dominates the various parts of this country, from granite in the east to limestone in the west, is an indelible and overlooked part of our landscape
THIS COUNTRY’S HUMAN landscape was traditionally delineated by hedgerows and by stone walls. It’s the latter that I want to consider today.
The chunks of stone that make up the walls surrounding my garden were cut from a nearby quarry. There are plenty of walls like them – of orange and silvery granite – defining many of the boundaries in this town.
My friends who live in the country have perimeters and divisions built from the stones lifted from the fields around them, so that it looks as if these rocky partitions sprouted naturally from the ground. The use of indigenous materials such as this makes gardens sit more comfortably into their landscape. For example, all along the east of this island, from south Co Dublin to New Ross in Co Wexford, runs a rib of granite mountains. They have yielded up the stone for the walls that line our roads and streets and that divide our properties. When you’re in this part of the country, it feels right to have a granite wall at your elbow, and a granite mountain off in the distance. Elsewhere on this island, it is local limestone or sandstone that provide the material for our built landscape.
IMPORTED PAVING
I know it’s expensive to use real stone, and it may sound elitist to be going on about its beauties. But, in fact, there are stone walls, buildings and other constructions all over this island: for centuries it was our main building material, for poor and rich alike. The problem is that we have stopped seeing it. What I’m trying to say here, is that if you have a stone wall, building, drinking trough, or pair of gate posts, then you’re lucky to have a bit of this country’s heritage. If you have a pile of granite from a tumbled down shed or wall, don’t fling it in a skip. If you don’t want to reuse it, someone else will. (Try posting the details on one of the recycling website such as www.freecycle.org or www.dublinwaste.ie, and you may have a taker.)
Our native stone is expensive to buy, although reclaimed material from a salvage business is likely to be cheaper, even if it may not be in convenient shapes and sizes. Indian sandstone may seem like an affordable alternative, and has become increasingly popular: about 250,000 tonnes are imported into Ireland and the UK annually.
However, there is a terrific price to be paid on much of this stone. In some quarries, children and bonded labourers are among the workers. Unicef estimates that in a typical sandstone quarry, 20 per cent of the labour force is made up of children. Conditions are substandard, and injuries and illness are common. Most of the exported sandstone is sold through agents, so it is impossible to trace its origins. At present, only Marshalls, the paving company in the UK, has signed up to an ethical trade initiative (www.ethicaltrade.org). So, for the present, Indian sandstone may be cheap for us, but someone else is paying.
WALLS OF ARAN
“When the rest of Europe was being industrialised in the 19th century, Ireland was still a rural country,” says architect Mary Laheen. “We were not an urban nation. It is that very fact that makes the Irish landscape so interesting.”
Our agricultural topography, with its network of small fields, walls and boreens, was largely intact, even after the second World War. But now, says Laheen, this unique cultural landscape is under threat from development, road-building and the industrialisation of agriculture. It is urgent, she believes, that we recognise and conserve this rich heritage instead of heedlessly erasing it in the rush to urbanisation, and to “catch up” with the rest of the world. “We are losing sight of the fact that what we had in the rural landscape was what we are, whether we like it or not.”
One of our most intact and beautiful rural cultural landscapes is that outlined by the drystone walls of Aran, a subject on which Laheen has just produced a book. Her densely written volume (which had its origins in her master’s thesis) considers the history, geology and other factors that are embodied in these traditional field boundaries. She helps to uncover the stories that these walls tell, and allows us to see them as much more than grey divisions imposed on the land.
They are organically made, flexible boundaries, with gaps opening or closing as movements and grazing require, with hidden stiles offering shortcuts to the shoreline, and the whole lot laced through with green roads – some only wide enough for a single cow. In Aran, Mary Laheen has shown that the skeins of limestone walls are a priceless part of the islands’ fabric and history. If only we could shift our gaze to the stonework in the rest of this country, and see it with the same enlightened eye.
Drystone Walls of the Aran Islands: Exploring the Cultural Landscape
by Mary Laheen, is published by Collins Press, €19.99
