HIGH on the windswept fells above Talkin Chris Wilson is not only repairing years of neglect, he is restoring a new respect for the ancient craft of dry stone walling.

Wielding a slab of limestone, covered in moss and lichen, the 63-year-old instinctively knows straight away whether it’s the one he wants.

“It’s no good asking, what kind of stone do I want,” he says. “The stone I want is the one that’s going to go there.”

For Chris of Coal Fell, Hallbankgate, building a dry stone wall is like doing a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.

Armed with only a seldom used hammer, a good waller can balance a structure that will last for centuries.

To someone with an untrained eye, Chris, a father-of-three makes the job look easy, but it takes skill to get it right. “If someone says to me can you throw a wall up for me, I think I would rather build a wall, and I would like it done properly, done properly it can last for centuries.”

Moving to Cumbria, with his wife Pauline, was a change of scenery for Chris. Previously he had worked as a Cheviot hill shepherd and stocksman in the Scottish Borders and loved working in the outdoors. “My wife is originally from this area and she wanted to move back to be closer to her family.

“I’d done some dry stone work in the past and the odd repairs over the years as a stocksman. There wasn’t much work in this area as a stocksman or shepherd, so decided to change tack,” said Chris.

A year ago, Chris heard of a course at Newton Rigg College which was funded by The Edge. He spent six weeks with a master craftsman two days a week, and completed a Level One, Dry Stone Walling course.

Chris is also currently undertaking an Advance Craftsman’s Award with the Dry Stone Walling Association.

To help him in his work Chris has also completed courses in Sit Astride ATV and the transport of livestock on short journeys, and as well as learning walling techniques he also learned about safety at work.

“I really enjoyed it. It was fantastic,” said Chris. “I definitely will do more courses like this in the future. They have really helped me.”

He constructed his first big free-standing wall on the back of his home and has not stopped since. “Someone saw my wall and now I have work well into the New Year.”

Chris is up at the crack of dawn and spends most of his daylight hours outside. “It’s not the same as working with cattle. It’s peaceful.”

For company, Chris takes along his two dogs Rocky, his cattle dog, who helps him when he does his stock work, and Higgs his sheepdog, who tags along when Chris is out doing seasonal lambing, sheep clipping and dipping and calvings.

“I take my dogs with me and they sit alongside me as I work away. The hours pass by quickly.”

Every wall is different, he says, and some of them can be quite challenging. “Limestone, sandstone, boulder and cobble stone walls have to be handled in different ways. Sometimes you don’t use a hammer at all.”

The wall he has most enjoyed building is restoring a wall at an old Victorian pump house. “I had two or three jobs on at once, but was able to do the Geltsdale job at weekends, so that meant I could really get stuck into the pump house during the week.”

When starting a new job, Chris looks for the biggest and ugliest stones. “You need to get them as flat as possible and as level as possible. Then off you go, building up layer by layer, like a bricklayer. I like to build the wall slowly, but surely until it comes together. It has to be perfectly solid, square and upright.”

Britain boasts a staggering 125,000 miles of dry stone walls. A few are ancient, dating back to 3,500 BC. Most are field walls and went up in the early- to mid-1800s, in the wake of the enclosure acts. For a century they were well maintained; these days, farming lacks the resources. Neglected for long, soil gets in and seedlings follow: vegetation is the ruin of a drystone wall.

Chris says he is grateful to the dry stone walling fraternity who are very happy to answer any questions he has or give advice on anything he doesn’t know how to do.

Walling is hard work, says Chris: a walling gang could maybe do four to five metres a day, but he admits he probably doesn’t do as much as that, but likes to do a quality job.

“It starts out as a pile of rubble and in a few days is turned into something natural, sound and beautiful that, looked after, will last for centuries.”