Why Walls Still Matter on the Moor

Walk almost any upland path in Britain and you will spend half the day following a dry stone wall. From the granite-edged enclosures of Dartmoor to the pale limestone ribbons of the Yorkshire Dales, these boundaries are the scaffolding of the rural landscape. Most were raised between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the parliamentary Enclosure Acts accelerated the work dramatically. They divided common grazing, settled parish boundaries and gave the hills their patchwork character.

Follow a wall closely and you can read the land through it. A line that kinks mid-field usually follows an older ditch, a ridge of boulder clay or a stream that has since been straightened. Short stretches of wall that seem to lead nowhere are often the remains of a boundary that predates the field it now crosses. They are, in effect, historic maps you can lean on.

Built Without a Drop of Mortar

A dry stone wall stays upright through weight, friction and geometry alone. The waller digs a shallow footing, then lays two faces of stone with a slight batter, so the wall tapers inwards as it rises and every stone rests squarely on the one below. Between the faces goes the hearting: small stones packed tight to stop the faces bulging outwards.

At intervals of roughly every two metres, a long through stone crosses the full width, tying the two faces together and keeping the structure square. On top sit the coping stones, set upright or angled, which shed water and give a wall its distinctive spiky silhouette. Good stone is used as it comes out of the ground: large flats go low, thin flakes go into the hearting, and awkward shapes are turned rather than trimmed. A skilled waller might complete twenty metres in a good week. Weather, not use, is usually what brings a wall down.

A Boundary That Works for Livestock

For farmers, walls do a job no fence quite manages. They hold sheep — particularly hardy upland breeds such as Swaledales, Herdwicks and Welsh Mountain — on the fell, and they shelter them. A leeward wall can cut wind speed substantially, and in a late-April snowstorm that shelter is often the difference between a live lamb and a dead one. Sheep will tuck themselves along a wall for hours, grazing the warmer strip of ground beside it.

Walls last, too. A well-made one can stand for a century with only minor patching, whereas a wire fence needs replacing every fifteen or twenty years and costs money, timber and time. On steep, stony ground where a quad bike struggles, stone remains the sensible answer. Fields enclosed by walls are also easier to graze in rotation, which matters when moorland vegetation is slow to recover.

A Hotel for Wildlife

The gaps, crevices and crannies of an old wall make it one of the richest habitats in the uplands. Because stone warms quickly in sun and cools slowly at night, a wall creates its own microclimate, and a great deal of moorland life depends on it.

• Plants: orange lichens such as Xanthoria parietina, grey-green mosses, maidenhair spleenwort and wall pennywort all colonise mortar-free joints. A single mature wall can carry dozens of species.
• Invertebrates: bumblebees nest in old mouse holes among the hearting, while wall brown and grayling butterflies bask on south-facing stones.
• Reptiles and mammals: common lizards, slow worms and adders use walls to warm up in spring. Field voles and common shrews run along the base, safe from the open ground.
• Birds: wrens, wheatears and pied wagtails nest in gaps, and kestrels and barn owls hunt the sheltered strip of grass beside a wall where small mammals concentrate.

Because walls run for miles across open country, they also act as corridors and windbreaks, linking isolated patches of habitat and letting insects and small animals move between them without crossing exposed moor.

Repair Is a Craft and a Habit

Every wall is in a slow state of falling down. Frost heaves the footing, tree roots shift stones, sheep rub against the coping, and walkers who climb over rather than use a stile loosen the top courses. A gap of a metre soon becomes three.

Good repair means rebuilding, not propping up. Stones are lifted clear, the footing is reset, and the wall is relaid from the bottom with the original stone wherever possible, since local stone matches the colour and shape of its neighbours. Newly built sections should be left to settle and kept free of stock for a few weeks.

Skilled wallers are in steady demand and short supply, and many upland farms rely on a handful of local craftsmen or on training days run by county walling groups. If you own or manage land, budgeting for a few metres of repair each year is far cheaper than facing a collapse after a hard winter.

Walking Among Walls: A Few Courtesies

Dry stone walls are working boundaries, not climbing frames. Crossing a wall damages it, and the damage is rarely obvious until the next storm. Use the stiles and gates provided, and close every gate behind you, even if it was open when you arrived. In spring, keep dogs on a short lead near sheep, and give ewes with lambs a wide berth.

If you find a collapsed section, note the grid reference and tell the landowner, the local farmer or the parish footpath officer. It is a small thing, but it is exactly the sort of practical help that keeps a landscape working. The walls have shaped these hills for two hundred years and more. With a little care, and a great deal of patient skill, they will go on shaping them for another two hundred.