Dry Stone Walling with Ken

Ken is our walling guru, he has many years of experience walling in the Lake District. Most of his walling has been undertaken as voluntary work with the Lake District Wardens Service.

Currently he is handling a 5 year ESA project, demolishing and rebuilding field walls in Patterdale. If you drive from Brothers Water to Glenridding you will have seen two of the walls he rebuilt in recent years. The car park wall at Cow Bridge being a perfect example of dry stone walling. He is leaving quite a legacy and has even embedded a time capsule in one field wall. Soon to be 80 years young he still hoists giant throughstones and extracts foundation monoliths with ease.

Nowadays Ken acts as consultant on our retaining and small walling jobs locally. If you have a sharp eye you may spot him plying his craft in the fields underneath Angletarn Pikes.

Types of Walling Stone (including Dog-Eds)

One of the enduring delights of the Lake District are the dry stone walls and superbly crafted stone and slate buildings. Finding recycled walling stone is difficult now as most walls have to be rebuilt utilising the original stone and removing stone from derelict walls is illegal and unethical.

Fortunately a number of local quarries such as Kirkstone and Burlington supply dressed stone for new projects, and the traditions continue. Local wallers are scarce and outside wallers often employ different styles.

Dry stone retaining walls are very popular. They enhance the structure of a garden and blend perfectly with the local culture.

Dog-Eds? These are random boulders that are recovered from the fields during the clearing process and are what they sound like- shaped like Dog’s Heads. The hardest stone to wall with... Ask Ken !