Week Thirty Eight & Thirty Nine
As I meander around this beautiful landscape, I have always loved the dry-stone walls, or ‘Dry-Dykes’ as they are known locally. Not only do they look visually stunning as they gently undulate towards the horizons, they also form secret habitations for small animals, such as rabbits, stoats and weasels. The walls are double skinned with a central cavity that is filled with rubble, forming an underworld of tunnels and spaces, perfectly snug and dry for occupation. I imagine various hidden secret cities within different walls, an unseen metropolis of activity, a bunny crèche or a weasel bar perhaps? I cannot but help smile when I see a rabbit disappearing through a hole in a wall; I sometimes wish I could follow! There are special holes built in some walls to allow livestock to squeeze through, they are called ‘Sheep Creeps’. In my early days I thought the layer of stones that stuck out from the others, were merely to aid short people like myself to get over the wall, or to ascertain a higher viewpoint; and although I still may use these stones as such, I thankfully now know better. The ‘troughs’, as they are called, are essential to hold the double layers together. It is a real skilful art to build a dry-stone wall successfully. 
The origins of building in dry stone i.e. without the use of mortar are lost in the mists of antiquity. Most of the dry-stone walls we see today are products of the post-medieval move towards enclosure. As individual landowners abandoned farming in favour of raising sheep and cattle, they enclosed land, which had been owned or used "in common", by all the inhabitants of a village. The right to use the common land was lost as landowners enclosed fields and, in some cases, evicted villagers to make room for sheep. Dry-stone walls are not merely features of agricultural interest; they are in a sense, living history; a legacy of the movement towards enclosure of common farming and grazing land, as English society moved away from feudalism. 
The Enclosure Acts of the 18th and 19th century gave rise to an explosion of wall building that we still see in existence today. The demarcation of land into private ownership provided a strong impetus to permanently mark out such territory, and stone and labour were in plentiful supply at that time. With sheep and cattle, the dry-stone wall provided a means of protecting such a valuable investment. Dry-stone walls became a permanent feature of the landscape and are now part of our heritage. 
The age of dry-stone walls is around 200 years, testament to their durability and the skill of the men who built them. However most walls we see today would have been rebuilt and repaired several times over the years. To illustrate the scale of wall building in Britain, it has been estimated that in the region of 17,000 miles of wall exist in Yorkshire alone. 
Since living in Tarset I have been in admiration of the people that dwell here. I have never before witnessed a community that holds such respect for their immediate heritage; it is extremely inspiring. The wealth of knowledge held by a large section of the community, regarding the local history is, quite frankly, staggering. They care about the place, they are interested, they are actively participating in it, and it shows. For one of my major artworks I became fascinated by the idea of building something that held a strong sense of both chronicle and place, something that was steeped in history, but I wanted to build it from only using local newspapers, I wanted to recreate something essentially old with today’s news. I also wanted to create something that is naturally strong, enduring and solid with something that is fragile and disposable. The local newspaper is called the ‘Hexham Courant’, which a few neighbours and I have been collecting for the past six months. I kept experimenting with the idea of stitching paper stones together, with several attempts that looked rather poor. To brick like, to modern and not like the glorious weathered stones that make up these beautiful walls.
The whole task seemed rather impossible…what build a stone wall out of newspaper! Back in April talking to a friend about the idea, she became interested in the mission. I cannot begin to list the many talents that this particular friend holds. Rosie is her name and talent is her game. She is I confess, the most capable, talented, both highly logical and creative woman that I have ever known, I have always held her in much admiration…with also a smattering of awe. After much deliberation whether to go ahead with this project, I could not let it rest, it kept coming back to me, especially whilst walking. I negotiated with Rosie whether she was up for the challenge to help me construct, yes a dry-stone wall out of newspaper. Luckily for me she was really excited by the project. 
After several days of preparing hundreds of sheets of newspaper, coating it with PVA (twice each sheet) and hanging them to dry like some strange washing line, Rosie arrived from Gloucestershire and the collaboration commenced. As I mentioned Rosie is skilled, whether she has done something before or not. I know she is amazing with a sewing machine, so she became chief sewing Queen and I became chief filler and finisher of our stones. We began a production line of rock making, all different shapes and sizes, just like any decent dry-stone wall would have. 
We even made ‘troughs’ and the glorious differently shaped copingstones that go on top. Our first day was really exciting but as the production line got bigger and bigger, we got rather dismayed by our stones, they looked like a large pile of badly wrapped Christmas presents. The obvious question hung over us, was this really going to work? Was this to mad an idea? 
With collaborations there has to be sense of synergy that flows between both parties. Rosie had faith in my idea and vision and I had faith in her skills. Turning the stitched stones inside out and then filling them with newspaper and hand finishing the ends formed a new plan. We started again. It became obvious after a while that the new paper stones actually did look like…errr stones! Over the next few days we became thoroughly excited and worked like Trojans to produce over a hundred hand-made rocks. We of course had to build a wall to see if it would really work. It was a jubilant experience, building a dry-stone wall out of newspaper. The result we thought was fantastic, we loved it and went to sleep extremely happy. 
With all the excitement I hadn’t really taken into consideration that old buildings can be crumbly, tumbley and rather leaky. Now as lots of us know, it often rains up North, something, which we have of recent, be rather short of, and we all know the combination of newspaper and water is a rather soggy affair. In the early morning I ran towards the stable in full excitement to view our handy work, lets just say you could hear the cries of woe all the way to the nearest village… eight miles away. 
Our glorious wall had been flooded, soggy bricks sagged sadly, but incredibly it still stood up. It had rained so hard it even produced a perfect representation of geological weathering, a huge hole in one of the bricks. The only way forward was to remedy all issues, leaky building and an unstable bottom course. 
With the agility of a trapeze artist, Rosie was clambering around ladders inventing a plastic covering over the roof. We couldn’t fix the roof, we cannot move the wall but we could at least divert the drips. Mission completed, next job, dry out rocks and re-stuff and make bottom level stronger. Raise the wall off the floor slightly and for extra measure insert a hidden shelf for extra support, which would, we know, have most dry-stone builders gasping in horror…it is made of paper…give us break! With all these measures in place, wall two, looked even better and we were even more delighted than before. In truth, I have never felt so jubilant about one of my artworks. This collaboration was more than a success, it was excellent! Just the final touches of paint (very subtlety) to take the brashness off the newspaper, and hey presto one fantastic wall made entirely out of newspaper, passion and skill! 
Rosie happily departed home, although we are both nervous of it remaining in good condition for the opening of the show. And I have to say, as I write this bloooogy blog, tonight is the biggest test of all. The four buckets we had in place has now trebled, it is raining so hard that I’m not sure how to start expressing the severity of it. I am now on wall watch, which seems ironic that I am trying to protect a wall from the elements. The rain is actually paramount to torture for me…I know we need it…I even wanted it last week…I just want the wall to survive to at least the opening…we worked so hard to make it and it just looks so fabulous. And just to add how much people care here, a 73-year-old neighbour rushed out in torrential rain with a tarpaulin tucked under his arm. Now that’s community spirit. Thank you Rosie, I am indebted to your help, it was an honour and a privilege to work with you…you are indeed an angel. Love you loads x