A Special Hadrian's Wall!!

I was commissioned by David Cross to build a wall at the bottom of his garden to separate a vegetable plot and play area from the main lawn. The garden had been levelled ready for landscaping and David wanted the wall building before the turf and plants were brought on site.

David, being an architect and a director of Coda Studios, wanted something special for his garden. After a couple of site visits to throw some ideas around and to physically mark out our ideas so that we could visualise what the end result would be, David decided on an undulating, curved wall in two sections with a seat built into one section. A doddle eh!!

David had moved 20 tonnes of stone from his front drive to the bottom of the garden so while I pinned out the job I had help from Sam, Andy and Jake to sort the stone into foundation stone, building stone, through stone, cheek end stone, stone for the seat and potential stone for the copestones. This in itself took a great deal of time and was in fact an ongoing process throughout the build.

After 50 man hours the first section of curved undulating wall was built. Now the next challenge
the same again plus a seat! I’d thought long and hard on how to pin this section out and spent a good 3 hours placing pins and running strings between them to visualise the finished job and to make sure the curve and line of the wall and seat flowed.

On this section I had the help of Dom and Declan who had completed their DSWA Level 1 exams at their college under the guidance of Master Craftsman Bill Noble. I’d brought them along to help sort the remaining stone and to act as labourers bringing me the stone I required as I built the wall. I could see they were dying to have a go and put some stone into the wall so under supervision I let them loose on the wall. They did a great job. I was really impressed at their skills and the care they took. A credit to their teacher!

The wall and seat completed it then took me a days work (on my own, everyone seemed to do a runner at this stage – I wonder why?!!) to select cut and shape nearly 200 (cope) stones for the top of the wall. I had arms like Arnie by the time I’d finished!!

What has made the wall for me is the excitement and delight with which it has been received by David and his wife Toni. In fact David got so enthused he built himself a little wall around the plot with the spare stone and considering he hadn’t had any tuition he did a great job of it. (He’d have done better if he’d been on one of my courses!!). When David said to me ‘It’s even better than I imagined! It’s beautiful. I’m delighted.’ then I knew I had done a good job!