Its a sort of contradiction really as a dry stone is very rarely dry in Derbyshire, especially recently. We have a fair few dry stone walls here in Gloucestershire but this drawing of one in Derbyshire just illustrates how much I like them. It’s early days with this drawing and unlike some I think this one will benefit from colour.There are times when I ruin a perfectly alright drawing by fannying about with the colour and I’m determined that it won’t happen with this one.

It is lovely to see these things being built and I suspect it is very therapeutic building them. The idea is of course, not to use any concrete whatsoever, so a wall with a capping of concrete is a cop out. The angle of the stones is also key to good construction, the rain water should run off efficiently, any frost or ice forming within the stones might well bring on cracking.

I speak of dry stone walling as if I’ve had a go at it, I’ve not, but have seen them being built. There’s one on the high road out of Stroud going towards Bisley in the Cotswolds that I watched being built ( not every day! ) where the two men building the wall had a tent to keep them dry or out of the sun as they made their very gentle way along. It must have taken them a year or so to complete and the final version is nothing short of magnificent.I’ll try and get a picture of it sometime to prove my point.