Dry Stone Walling - Summer 2015
This summer, BET's volunteers rebuilt the old dry stone wall at the top of Jubilee Stone Wood, next to the car park entrance.
This is one of the remaining sections of wall which ran the whole length of Cheston Coombe lane but most of which has collapsed and disappeared.
There were signs that this stretch had been rebuilt in the past but it was in a very sorry state and had a lot of rubbish dumped along it. We decided that the JSW reserve warranted a smarter entrance and so over a couple of months our dedicated volunteers applied their skills on Monday mornings and tackled the rebuilding.
After a couple of sessions just clearing away the debris and removing tree roots, we took most of the wall down to ground level and reset some of the bottom foundation stones.
Then the fun began - rebuilding the wall stone by stone. This can be a frustrating job as the stones are never quite the right shape! But under the guidance of our more experienced wallers, week-by-week the wall rose until we had used up all the available stone.
Lots more photos of the progress and magnificent final result can be seen in this album.
Hopefully the wall will survive for many years and will be admired by passers-by and re-inhabited by local wildlife - like the slow worm in the photos we encountered between the stones!
