Three metres of field wall in four days, and where the time went
The stretch I rebuilt over the bank holiday was 3 metres long and had been a grassy hump of stone for at least twenty years. Four long days took it from hump to finished wall, 1.2 metres high with copes, and I kept rough times because I had always wondered where the hours go.
Day one was all stripping out and sorting, about seven hours. Every stone came out of the hump and was laid on the grass in rows by job: big flat ones for footings, good-faced ones for the two faces, long ones that could reach right through the wall for throughs, fist-sized rubble for hearting, and a separate pile of tall narrow pieces for the copes. The old footings were still roughly in place and I dug beside them to firm subsoil, about 150 millimetres down, and relaid the biggest stones there, longest dimension pointing into the wall. By the end of the day there was nothing above ground but a line of footings and I felt I had gone backwards.
Days two and three were the faces, about eight hours each. I set up batter frames at both ends, 700 millimetres wide at the base narrowing to 400 at 1.2 metres, with strings between them that I raised course by course. Both faces go up together, each stone crossing the joint between the two below it, every stone tilted slightly down towards the outside so water runs out rather than in, and the hearting packed tight by hand behind them as each course is finished. At about 600 millimetres I laid the throughs, one per metre, protruding a little on both sides. The second day I managed six courses; the third, with the stones getting smaller and the choices fewer, only five.
Day four, five hours, was the final course and the copes: upright stones set shoulder to shoulder along the top, leaning very slightly in the same direction, wedged tight so that the last one had to be hammered in. A loose cope is the first thing a sheep or a child removes.
Rough arithmetic afterwards: three metres of wall at that height and width is about two cubic metres of stone, somewhere near three and a half tonnes. Each stone was lifted at least twice, many of them four or five times as I tried them and put them back. Call it ten tonnes through my hands over four days, which explains the following Tuesday.