Dry Stone Wall - Headingley

The more observant of anyone who has ever been to Headingley will know that the dry stone wall in the photograph above is not in headingley and they would be quite right.

This wall is not far outside the village of Haworth in Bronte country where I walked on this bank holiday monday.  Yorkshire has many thousands of miles of dry stone wall, some of them very old and date back more than 2000 years.  Many walls are around 200 years old and can be seen all over Yorkshire.  This wall has an old step stile built into it and also there is a gap for sheep built into the wall too called a cripple hole.

The connection with Headingley lies in the photograph below taken of a newly built stretch of dry stone wall around a small car park not far from the Arndale centre on Otley road.  I do not often encounter a new wall built using this old method, especially in cities like Leeds.

Dry stone walls are built by carefully selecting the stones to fit together and unlike a brick wall no mortar is used to cement them in place. The mortar would be wet, which is why they are called dry stone walls.




I will visit the dales over the next few weeks and the Leeds Photo Daily will do a post showing the mosaic of dry stone walls in the Yorkshire Dales.