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On Saturday we went to Castlandhill near Rosyth to work on the walls there. This has been a long running site for the former Central Scotland branch, with quite a considerable length of wall having been built by them over the years.  We had a really good turnout for a windy day with a good chance of rain, with twelve members eventually showing up. There was a small section which had been brought down by a falling tree, but this was too small for everyone to work on.  So while three of us tackled this, the rest set to work to dig out and rebuild the next collapsed section along from the previous work. It barely looked like there had ever been a wall here, with only a few stones in places showing where it had been.  There were a lot of very large stones which had got buried and needed dug out and reset before the wall could be built up around them.  Meanwhile, at the other end of the wall the small break caused by the falling tree had been put right.  Having done this we noticed that the wall further down wasn't in a great state. A lot of the copes and top courses had come off, and there was one bit which had been built too wide at the top for the copes. So we set to work to put this right as well.  There was quite a lot of stone lying in the woods behind the wall so we were able to build it up OK, but having done this we found that there was a distinct shortage of suitable copes. We started looking around for some, but then noticed it was lunch time so instead went and joined the others at the big rebuild. They'd got lots of big stones in and were filling up around them.  After lunch we 'borrowed' a few cope sized stones from near the rebuild, and scavenged for others in the woods. There was a serious lack of long stone to do the cheek end as well, but in the end we did the best we could with what we had. It was certainly a lot better than it had been before we started.  The rebuild team had got all the big stones into the wall and had started to build it up, but time was getting on and there was no way we'd get it finished that day, so we tidied up the site and left it for another time.   Thanks to everyone who turned up, to Iain for letting us play with his walls, and to Sam for photos.
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Last weekend we returned to Harlaw in the Pentlands to work on the walls there, once again aided by the Friends of the Pentlands. There were two sections needing attention, both of which had been deliberately pushed down - the first by vandals, and the second by a concerned Friend who realised that the wall was in danger of collapse. Saturday morning was bright and fair - almost too hot in the sun - and we had enough people (five of us and five Friends) to make a start on both sections. I failed to get a 'before' photo of the vandalised section, but here's how the other one looked before we started.  Note the big chunk of mortared-together copes on the middle of the heap of collapsed wall - this is part of the problem here, where the wall below the copes settles and comes away because the copes (being mortared together) can't settle with it. This isn't helped by the stone being traced (so, with the long dimension running along the wall rather than in to it) and the wall being largely hollow. Pretty much all of the wall along this side of the loch is leaning precariously and in danger of collapse.  We also had to deal with a barbed wire fence which had been erected along the field side of the wall, but once we'd got this rolled back we were able to clear the collapsed stone from the wall. We decided to push the next section down as well, as it was so close to collapse. The bit after that wasn't any too stable either, but we decided to leave that up for the time being at least as most of this wall is in a bad way, and there's a limit to what can be achieved in a weekend.  Mid morning Sam took a wander along to the vandalised section to see how the other team were getting on, and like us they'd had to take down more of the wall than had originally been damaged but had made good progress and were beginning to build the wall back up again.  Another couple of DSWA members joined us later in the morning, having got confused about where we were working and gone to Threepmuir, but had spotted our hi-viz vests and so had managed to find us. By lunchtime we'd got the collapsed section rebuilt up to sub-cope height, but we hadn't joined it on to the existing wall due to the poor state it was in and how far it was leaning over.  Team vandalised had been getting on well also, and were over half way back up.  After lunch it didn't take long to cope the section we'd done, so we decided to take down the next bit and rebuild that also.  Perhaps needless to say more of it came down than we'd anticipated, and pretty soon we had a section almost as big as the original gap to deal with.  Still, many hands make light work, and with eight of us working on it by the end of the day we'd got most of it back up to through height.  Team vandalism had also got lots done, and had only had to leave a short section when they ran out of stone.  We bumped into one of the rangers on our way out, and she said she'd get the next day's ranger to meet us first thing so we could go and collect more stone. The next day wasn't so bright and sunny, but a couple of us plus four Friends of the Pentlands braved the rain to head out and complete the work. Our ranger had proved better than her word and had already got a truck load of stone delivered to the vandalised site, and it didn't take us long to get it done.  We wheelbarrowed some of the stone round to the other site and were planning to return for the rest, but we bumped into the duty ranger and he agreed to bring it round for us in his truck - which proved just as well as my garden-strength barrow had proved not up to the job, and wouldn't've survived another run. The ranger very kindly also agreed to take a few of us up to the place where we were getting the stone from to get some more, and in the end did two more runs which gave us plenty to be getting on with, and by late morning we'd got the section we'd taken down the day before back up.  This left the small gap at the other end of the repair we'd done on Saturday. The problem with this was that the existing wall was leaning very precariously, which was both unsafe and also difficult (almost impossible) to build up to.  So we gave it a shove, and down it came.  The rain had gone off a bit by this time, but as soon as it stopped the midges came out in force. There was a bit of a breeze down by the loch which kept them away, so we had our lunch there. After lunch we dug out the new gap to foundation level:  and built it back up properly.    We were a bit surprised that we'd managed to get it completed, especially after so much had come down at the last shove: having chunky stone feels like hard work at the time, but it does get the wall back up quickly, so that had helped. We'll hopefully be back in the vicinity soon to finish off the wall at Threepmuir.
Thanks to everyone who came along to help out, and to Sam for photos. |
AuthorThis blog, and the rest of the site, are produced by Donald McInnes, secretary of the East of Scotland DSWA (I'm the baldy one, sometimes in a saltire hat). Archives
September 2026
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