From:
Norman Watts <Norman_Watts@zzzzzzz>
Date:
Wed, 1 Jun 2005 07:51:03 -0400
Subject:
drywall or Dry Wall
On May 14, 2005, at 1:21 AM, Simon Brown wrote:
Quoted text begins.John Walker puts it so well:
http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=6730
Dry Walling
Pick and lift and fit and settle and chock all day.
Stone scritch-scratches the rough glove.
You invent descriptions for the stone you want: .....
End of quote.
I just got back from a trip to Ireland and had a chance to see some
real dry walling. I've never been around Europe nor any part of of
Briton or Scotland, so for me the walls in Ireland were really
impressive. I've never seen such walls here in N. America. While the
walls in Kerry, where I spent most of my time, weren't so impressive
the ones up towards Galway amazed me. These things can get high! And
they are vertical, flat sided, and you can often see through them here
and there. Only rarely had any stone fallen out of the wall. I don't
know how they actually built them but they sure were good at it, better
than people further south it seemed to me. Part of it is that they had
better material to work with. The fields have more and much larger
stones. The best walls were built with a series of really large stones
spaced at somewhat regular intervals along the base. Usually these
stones were either squarish or, more often, triangular. It is not
uncommon to see these stones up to 3-4 ft high. They probably are the
full thickness of the wall. I assume they function to stabilize the
wall as the sections between the triangular stones settle and wedge
more and more solid over time. But sometimes even larger stones were in
the walls, up to several feet high. The walls then were maybe up to 10
feet high. And yet everything is flat and vertical on the sides. I saw
mostly the sides facing the road but I assume the sides facing the
meadows were equally flat and vertical. I couldn't tell if the stones
for each placement were prepared or selected. And I don't know which
approach would be more impressive, to select or fit each stone. There
were also some obviously recent walls and some are clearly well
constructed. The stone for these looks like it was specifically broken
for the purpose, but these walls are no match for the best of the old
ones. I presume there are similar walls elsewhere in Ireland and in the
UK, but I've never seen their equal here in N. America, or in S.
America, nor in Nepal which has some pretty fair wall builders.
n
Norman Watts, Ph. D.
National Institutes of Health
50 South Drive, Rm. 1509
Bethesda, MD 20892-8025
Phone: (301) 402-3418
Fax: (301) 480-7629
- References
- message 00274: drywall or Dry Wall - Simon Brown (14 May 2005)
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