To most of us, a dry stone wall is just there. Stretching off into the distance, dividing up the fields, it is something you drive past without noticing, something for sheep to scratch up against. For John Matthews, however, a dry stone wall is a thing of unmatched loveliness. More than that, in its earthiness, its natural heft, its timeless resilience, he finds inspiration. When John walks across the Peak District and sees a wall he doesn’t take it in his stride, its glories stop him in his tracks.
“Just look at that,” he says, pointing towards what, to my untutored eye, looks like a jumble of stones snaking their way across the brooding moorland. “How can you not see that’s beautiful?”
So enamoured is he with the structures he is convinced that they have qualities beyond mere division of property or the holding back of inquisitive cattle. A renowned documentary film-maker (his Grand Prix: The Killer Years accrued substantial acclaim when shown on the BBC) he discovered walls a couple of summers ago. He needed, he said, an escape from the relentless hurly-burly of trying to get films commissioned and financed. So he learnt how to build walls. And as he did so he quickly came to appreciate something extraordinary about the slow, precise and complex process: it was hugely contemplative.
So struck was he, he couldn’t stop building the things. As he did so, his blood pressure reduced, his shoulders shed their knots, his breathing relaxed. He found his mind clearing, the jumble of modern life easing. He describes it as “The Zen of Dry”.
Now he is hoping to help others appreciate the wonder of walls. He has set up a company called Dog With a Bone, which is doing two things: introducing anyone interested to the meditative aspect of building one, and passing on its benefits to unemployed youngsters. Everything about building a wall, he says, is educative. “There’s a big life lesson in this,” he explains. “The Japanese have a saying, 'chop wood, carry water’. It’s very useful advice for those of us stuck in the modern nonsense: get back to basics. Build a wall, sort yourself out.”
So it is that I find myself in a field near the village of Diggle in the Peak District, faced with a tumbledown jumble of a wall that I am going to rebuild, alongside a 20-year-old unemployed lad from Oldham called Kyle Barrow who has been sent along by the Mahdlo Youth Centre. But Kyle is late. He is having difficulty finding the place. Up here in the hills one wall looks very like any other.
John, though, doesn’t have time to waste, not when there’s a wall to build. He begins with me alone. He wants me to tune in to the environment, to realise where I am. So he gets me to stand with my eyes shut for five minutes, just listening. It’s an intense sensory experience, out there in the middle of nowhere. I immediately pick up the distant rush of water tumbling down the moorland after a heavy night’s rain. There’s the gentle munching of a couple of sheep on the other side of the field. There’s a couple of crows squawking. And then there’s the chirrup of John’s mobile. It’s Kyle, calling to say he’s still lost.
Next, John introduces me to the tools required. This is the lowest-tech of trades. There’s no machinery . All that is needed is a pickaxe, a hammer, a spool of string and some pegs to mark the course of the wall.
“You’re going back in time,” says John. “The whole point is, the wall was designed to suit the environment. You couldn’t lug cement up on to the hillside, you couldn’t get heavy lifting gear on site. It was in the middle of a field, you couldn’t bring special stones in. You just used what were available .”
So basically, it’s an outdoor game of Tetris
And what is available here is Yorkshire gritstone, lumps of rock that at one time would have been pulled from the fields and now sit splayed out all over the tumbledown bit of wall we are reconstructing. For the next hour or two, we unpick the old wall, laying out the stones in size order on the grass, ready for the rebuild. John suggests we work as much as possible without talking, the better to absorb the process, the better to let our minds tune in to the environment. The silence is only occasionally broken by John’s phone ringing. It is Kyle, still requiring route instructions.
When all the stones are removed and graded, we prepare the ground, carefully flattening the earth. As we do so, I can feel my mind wandering. I am not immediately sure if that is the first effects of mindfulness or just through the boredom of such a repetitive task. When we stop for a midmorning cup of tea, I ask if walling has always been a job people found contemplative.
“Old wallers were paid on piece work, so I doubt they’d have been very Zen in their approach,” he says. “It would be a case of 'chuck the thing up’.” There will be no chucking the thing up here, however.
“There should be something you learn beyond the indulgence of contemplation,” says John of his course. “Yes, we’re here for an exercise in mindfulness. But we’re going to finish this bit of wall today. And we’re going to do it properly.”
As we begin, the first thing I discover is that a dry stone wall is in fact two walls, built about a foot apart, filled with a sandwich of gravelly grit called hearting. The walls are put together by placing appropriately shaped stones one on top of the other and ensuring they are flat and rigid by gently wedging in smaller stones. John has an idea that he has introduced to all his walls: he inserts a time capsule into the hearting, a little treasure to be discovered perhaps 200 years into the future when the wall finally collapses. Or probably earlier in the case of my construction.
A dry stone wall (like this one in the Lake District) is actually two walls, with a layer of grit known as 'hearting’ between them CREDIT: ALAMY
I am just placing in the grit my time capsule (with the front page of that day’s Telegraph in it), when Kyle finally turns up, no more than two hours late. After he has taken him up the hillside for a five-minute silent retune, John asks me to explain to the new arrival how to build a wall. I tell him about the grading, the sizing, how you need to find stones that fit the spaces. Taking one look at what I am doing, Kyle says: “So basically it’s like an outdoor game of Tetris.”
This is someone already one step ahead of me. We make a good team, Kyle and me, soon finding the right stone to slot in, sensing what’s needed, ensuring every piece sits tight in place. We quickly develop an unspoken arrangement, where one of us moves in with a stone, while the other steps back to take a breather. And we need it.
“It’s hard work,” John says. “After a day of walling you’ll notice it.”
He is right. All the lifting, the hoicking, the fresh air: it’s tiring. Most mindfulness has no element of physical stretch. With walling, you are soon exhausted. As the early winter sun begins to fade we have placed the final vertical line of stones known as coping on the top of our construction. It may be no more than a yard or so long, but we have built a wall. And my mind does feel, if not liberated, then oddly rested.
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