Yorkshire Crafts: Meet the drystone wallers 

I could listen to that chap all day, he's well spoken

Love this kind of thing. Centuries old craft, still being kept alive by a quiet, dedicated, humble hardworking few. Well done men.

As impressive as the craft of dry waling is, this man has a talent for narration and story telling that is what really caught my attention.

The waller is as articulate in explaining the craft as he is skilled in actually laying the stones. A marvellous little film.

The serenity he speaks of comes right through in his voice and mannerisms. He really has found his niche in life.

What's cool is that here in Kentucky we still build these in the same way. Our ancestors carried the technique across the Atlantic and kept it alive to today. Nice work.

This man would be a good narrator for historical documentary.

My dad loves sharing the story of when he first started driving in Somerset and lost control on a corner and took out a dry stone wall just as the mason was putting the final stones in. My grandfather made him go back the next day, and for the week after, to help repair the wall.

By the time he stepped through the squeeze stone, I was in awe of their patience, strength, and skills.

I have to admit that, the squeeze through was really marvelously built. So elegant, it does go naturally with the landscape.

Brother there ain’t a stone mason to be found here in the States that can talk as proper as that fella. Especially in the rural areas (the dales). Impressive craftsmanship and a great video. Thanks for sharing.

Beautiful masonry. Having mostly flat rock to work with must be a joy. Here in northwestern U.S. the stone is glacial till and mostly rounded cobbles and boulders. Makes fitment a serious challenge.

Culture is the collection of a million little things you do every day, and dry stone walls are a perfect example of that. If you don't support your craftsmen, these glorious walls are what you lose. Of course, supporting the craftsmen is about more than just hiring someone to put up a wall because it's the laws, regulations, taxes and everything else we support which has a huge impact on the small businesses we normally pay no attention to. Everyone talks about the straw that broke the camel's back, but never the million straws that came before and how they prevented the camel from doing camel things.

Monuments to man's ingenuity. Turning a free resource, stone, into a functional component of the landscape. Marvelous!

I watched a video about hedge laying and now these dry stone walling videos are also in my feed. I love it.

Salutation from a Greek island covered with dry-stone walls.

I’m obsessed with Masonary stonework just incredible works of art just mesmerized by the workmanship

True craftsmanship! hello from the U.S.A. Beautiful work

Utterly absorbing - like the comment below, I could listen to that man for hours, he explains everything so well. I live in Burgundy in France, and have dry stone walls on my property that need some upkeep. Actually, that's something of an understatement. I still hope to be able to do the work myself at some point, and this little video has inspired me. Many thanks, Tom.

Thank you for this very interesting video. The walls are a beautiful piece of art dotting the landscape. 👏👏👏

Wow dude. Your calling, if not a waller, should have been a teacher. My grand kids would understand the basics of walling after this video. Well done.

Once came across a gentlemen repairing a wall in Derbyshire. He was well over fifty and i asked him how long he had been walling . His reply was that his eighty five year old father was teaching him !😊

Beauty unto itself. I was raised country in rural Pennsylvania, an area where the farmers' best crop is rocks. They made permanent fences, and there are zigzag walls, where colonists put in rail fences, laying rails on rails without any binding for miles, followed by stone after the forests were removed. When learning walling, my father and uncles were adamant. If you can lay a good dry wall, you can build a house. When I moved to Arizona, one thing I did was hire someone to haul in rubble, and am still in the process of building retainer walls. thank you for this film. It takes me back to working with Dad and the uncles, laughing, joking, and maybe cussing a little. niio

Brilliant story teller. That man is a natural.

Hats off to the wallers! And to those who recognized and filmed these craftsmen. Thank you!

This is quite a refreshing look into enduring fruits of the dry stone wall craft

As nice as a job it is and looks, when he said there were complaints about them at first. I can imagine so, what those beautiful rolling hills looked like without them... must have been stunning.

"The mind can go elsewhere".....exactly right. The sign that you've mastered your craft. These types of walls can be found in Ozark county, Missouri, where my family homesteaded.

Magnificent walls , effective , of the place where they are , longer lasting than anything bar hedgerow. Great job . 👍🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

Great video. Somehow i got pulled in. "Just a quick peek, i told myself".... Now i want more.

As an American tourist in Northern England, I had the good luck to attend an agricultural fair, out in the middle of nowhere. One of the events was an in situ dry stone wall building demonstration. Believe it or not, a lot of technology goes into building these magnificent structures. The two sides are leaning slightly inwards, each side constantly trying to fall into the other, using gravity to hold the opposite up. As he said, some of these walls are truly ancient. In certain places they are many hundreds of years old and still doing their job. Amazing.

As an American traveling through Ireland, Scotland and the UK, I’ve always been fascinated by these walls found everywhere in the countryside. They do indeed have character. The precision involved is obvious. That why I was curious about this video. It makes sense one needs formal training to do this properly. Not just stack a pile of rocks. Great presentation. Thank you.

There are great stone walls in Ireland ~ Built mostly with Limestone.

Very nice work. He has the most soothing British accent I have ever heard

Most informative, the presenter was very well spoken and outlined the craft very well to make it easy to understand. Thank you so much

I find dry stone masonry completely beautiful and almost mystical. I would love to someday make a short wall separating the front yard from curb area, and include an arbor trellis for some climbing roses. Here I'd have to buy the right stone to do it and it's expensive so for now it's a lovely dream.

True craftsmen can hardly put into words their appreciation for these skills, work done right is it's own reward !

What a briliant tradie, any aprentice trained by this man is surley lucky

incredible. Admire this as you would the egyptian pyramids. THIS IS YOUR HERITAGE AND CULTURE. protect it

A mile of that a year per man is astonishing!

Yorkshire is a beautiful place and the drystone walls and barns add to the beauty. Thank you for this video.

Fantastic craftsmanship! My very first job was a trainee QS on the M62 and we had a gang of wallers, a real pleasure to watch.

Don’t you worry about some people calling the walls ugly, I think they looks great! Glad to see that groups like you and your good friends doing a great and wonderful jobs. Keep up the OLD WAYS and do teach this trade to the younger generation,so they can pass this knowledge on, peace and may GOD bless you all.👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺☮️☮️☮️☮️

Having worked with brother (a skilled mason) years ago and having atteMpted to gain basic competence in this art, I can say convincingly that it is not anywhere close to as easy to learn as this modest chap lets on. There are those that can and those that can’t

I've always found stone a great material to build things with. Those walls are not ugly in my eyes, they give cadence to the land. What a beautiful country, keep taking care of it. Thanks for sharing.

Beautiful work, Master craftsmen! Thankyou for sharing their expertise!

What a great short doco, on something i have always admired. Bias perhaps, as my family come from there. Looking forward to learning that skill myself one day.

He handsomely captures the concept of 'flow'', the effortless proficiency of a skilled craftsman ❤

Very beautiful workmanship, pleasing to the eye as well as practical! All the stones in the fields can be used to border the same fields!!❤️😊

I dig the meditation aspect. Making badass things with our hands is reward like no other.

So interesting, how great to have a skill and craft like that and apply it to a practical use. 👍

It's so gratifying to see this kind of art continuing today!!! Here in the USA, if it's a few decades old, it's considered REALLY old, but there...ha!! Well, you get my meaning? There, across the pond, it's just life as it's always been. That's a comfort to me. Love seeing this brought out in such lovely detail. Love the craftsman that revealed it all for us! Thanks so much! ❤❤❤

I am a dry stone waller, all day I dry stone wall Of all appalling callings, dry stone walling's worst of all. ~Pam Ayers

The satisfaction you must get deep down inside when you look at that wall and say I built that with my own two hands must be a awesome feeling

Rural England is such a beauty, also because of these walls.

Fantastic mate, a pleasure to watch you all work .

What a great video, and what a great group of people to carry on a tradition!

I admire the craftsmanship!

Spectacular work..and no one was on a cell phone.

Wow this shows how primitive our "walls" and fences are today. This is true craftmanship. ❤

❤ Aloha 🌺 from Germany. Thank you so much for sharing this "know how" amazing! In northern Germany we do have a lot of little stones of granite... collected from the farmers... I love to build walls in our paradisegarden. 😍🙏

Beautiful, and strongly presented.

What a perfect short, sweet, yet fantastic video. Thank you for that.

A wonderful video to understand how this masterpiece of work has been done. Greetings from Germany. 🫡

I live in Arkansas, USA and we have these everywhere! Lots of traditions came from other parts of the world. I’ve learned to build them to some degree myself on my land!

Thanks so much for this video! Very informative, wonderful narration, great to know that this custom has not faded away. ♥

I fell in love with the Yorkshire landscape and these walls as a kid watching Last of the Summer Wine on PBS

that is so beautiful

amazing work , true heritage

One man + one year = one mile. Got it.

🟤⚪️⬛️🟠⬜️🟡🟫🔴🟧⚫️◻️🟨 I love Yorkshire and I love building with stone, though I am very much a beginner. There is something so satisfying when you can fit stones snugly together in a pattern or a wall or whatever you are working on. Stones are so varied and are so beautiful to me.

Absolutely marvellous. I was thinking of building a small drystone wall in my garden ❤

Beautiful work Sir ❗🤔 As a 78year retired Arch' Eng', i took the liberty of teaching myself " Dry Stone Masonry " as late as 1991 to enhance my skills..❗ Hardwork but very stimulating for the Soul..❗🤔 Barrelvault Construction is also one of my favourite construction principals and has been since graduation in 1969 even with recycling of modern high-tech waste material combined with Ferrocement Yacht Building Techniques ( having constructed 4 off in 1973-'76) as cleaning up of the Environment..❗ Keep up the good work ❗👏🏻👏🏻👍🏻 Shalowm ❗🙇‍♂️from " Out of Africa" ❗🍉🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇿🇦

WOW! How could anyone possibly think these are ugly? They are MAGNIFICENT! The skill, determination and just plain hard work involved makes them a treasured art form! I can easily see where this would be a meditative craft

What a fantastic passion! Great Video

Really interesting. In northern Spain, on a territory called "Valles Pasiegos", there is a similar landscape made of dry stone walls and stone cabins.

beautiful video. salute to these craftsmen

I learned so much from this video. 🥰 Thank you. 😊

Simply majestic, in all aspects.

Love it all. Keep up the traditions, don’t let the government erase this part of our culture.

Fantastic... And a terrific commentary. That gentleman has an absolute gift . A natural orator.

An amazing craft and a very eloquent chap explaining the construction.

My wife and I recall many happy days in West Yorkshire with our British friends. And those memories are filled with the Big Sky Country-look of the open Dales and their walls. All so very familiar as we are life-long rural New Englanders with our own historical tradition of dry stone walling and grand rolling hills & meadows. We have our walking trails, too, but there's not yet as good a pint at the end of a day's wanderings than found in the Dales.

What a blessing to do what you love doing as a lifelong career.... Hedgelaying, too....a work of art just to look at....

We also have them all over rural Pennsylvania. Many somewhat neglected running through grown over lots. A lot of the older ones were removed too. They would pay good money when I was young to have them removed stone by stone and stacked on pallets to be sold to landscapers and new home owners for new walls or pavers elsewhere. When they're not overgrown and put together well the freeze thaw cycle makes them fall into themselves and become stronger over time.

DRystone or mortar... the natural look simply feels grounded. It's utterly beautiful. Not as artificial, cold and lifeless as concrete. Most likeable. Also, David does a marvellous job explaining things.

I grew up with much less crafted drystone walls throughout our farmland. The skills shown here are outstanding!

An excellent piece! Bravo!

Excellent video 👍👏

Interesting and beautiful. I'm from New England, where we have the uglier, less cared for brother of these stone walls, the fieldstone wall. They were made from the meeting of two practicalities of life. The fields in New England grow stones more easily than any crop, so farmers needed to remove them to plow, and they needed to have markers between landowners and fences to keep sheep in. Building fences of stones made a useful way to dispose of them without carrying them far. These days the farmers have mostly moved to more fertile areas and the fields are woods. So if you go for a hike, you'll inevitably come across an old, falling down waist height wall.

Just love the way he speaks. A true Englishman.

Beautiful work! I love stone like this. My wife and I are having our new porch stone faced with natural drystacked ledgestone from West Virginia. At least, that was the intent. Some of the stone doesn't lend itself to a drystack look, but it's still beautiful. So much better than fake and not that much more expensive. Well, not too much more. Contractor has to do the chimney yet. Hopefully, this week to finish.

Those are some fine, fine walls.

Could listen to this chap all day long. Very knowledgeable and clearly spoken. Same as I could (and still do on RU-vid) listen to Fred Dibnah.

I love how he said it seems to grow from the landscape rather than dominate it

Impressive walls, but an even more impressive waller! I could have watched for an hour longer.

Love that accent and way of speaking. Very interesting video as well

The walls are beautiful

fascinating video on a highly skilled craft, beautiful and practical

It's good to see this ancient craft still alive.