Garlock Hits the Road [Part 2]: Keeping A Craft Alive

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)"In a hundred years there may not be any of us left." We came across stonecrafter Rob Willan (second from left) Saturday in Orton, where he was teaching a handful of students how to build the dry stone walls that are so ubiquitous in this part of England. Dry stone walls are so called because they're built completely without cement, relying on the stonecrafter's skill in piecing together the stones. "There aren't many of us left," Willan told me, explaining that he'd learned from artist Andy Goldsworthy, whose works include a famous series of dry stone walls in unusual settings. "There are a few of us here in this area," Willan said, "but the knowledge of how to build and maintain these walls is slowly dying out" as farmers replace expensive handbuilt stone walls with cheaper barbed wire fences. Building stone walls is labor-intensive skilled work. Stones must be carefully chosen, chipped to fit, and placed correctly. A good "waller" can build three meters a day, and each pasture can require hundreds, if not thousands, of meters of walls to enclose. Unlike fences, stone walls last. "Most of the walls around here are hundreds of years old," Willan said. "In fact, in the Lake District, some of the walls date back to the Viking days. And they're still in use today. " Many others were built during the Enclosure Acts between 1720 and 1840, when previously communally-shared fields were divided into individually-owned plots. With that, he turned back to his class and their practice wall, working to keep an age-old craft alive, a few apprentices -- and a few stones -- at a time. - Union City Managing Editor Chris Garlock and his wife Lisa are halfway through the 200-mile Coast to Coast walk across England , celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary and raising funds for the CSA (Union Cities Mobilizer's 200-mi UK Walk to Raise Funds for CSA's Emergency Assistance Fund UC 4/17/2013); photos by Chris Garlock