Project: rebuild a collapsed dry stone wall. My first go-will post pic of the result.

I’ll have take it all down- the core is like a box of cornflakes, no structure running through it.

Cousins.

Liberated after a squillion years.

Lesson 1: dry stone walls contain a LOT of stone.

Lesson 1 A is have a system of sorting stones. Lesson 2 is find the original section if one survives. What collapsed, and I dismantled so far, contains some mid C20 garbage. But the early stump has ‘muck’ (Somerset)- it was once a mortared wall.

Lesson 3: I’m much too distracted by fossils to do this efficiently. Look! A 200 million year-old bivalve from the Late Triassic white lias seam!

A note about the spirit of this project. I rate art historians who draw (though their research subjects are inevitably superior) and I rate architectural historians who have experience of building (ditto, hats off to master builders). So I do, to learn. https://www.treehugger.com/slideshows/modular-design/10-modern-sheds/

So the base courses survive and retain their degraded lime mortar. This is likely an C18 wall to go by the evidence of maps and surrounding farm buildings so I’m keeping as much as possible in-situ.