A landowner asked me to fix 2 gaps in July 2021. A car ploughed straight through the wall. It spun round in the field, turned around, and smashed through another section back out onto the road. The driver remained unharmed. This is often the case, as the dry stone wall has a certain ‘give’ and reduces the impact somewhat. I worked on the hill that divides the Ribble Valley, Hyndburn, and Blackburn in Lancashire.
People often encounter this type of job. The insurance company usually pays the landowner for the damages to the wall. On seeing the mess of the site, it could look like an overwhelming task to return it to its original state, but that’s where experience, patience, and skill come in! I quite like doing gap repairs. There’s a knack to assessing how far to take back, and I often have to play a bit of ‘jenga’ to remove just the stone that is needed and no more. Then, I have to reset the foundations, round up all the coping stones, and line them up. It then becomes a case of carefully marrying the two sides together by weaving the courses into the newly set gap stones. As you can see from the pictures, I can transform a horrible looking smashed dry stone wall into a neat looking repair in a couple of days using only the stones lying around. This was not the first time a car had hit this section of wall, and it won’t be the last! I often return to the same or nearby spots time and time again.
