Here’s how we built a stacked stone wall without using mortar. This traditional method of piling stones is easy and fun! Perfect when you have a lot of extra stones to deal with.
A lot of credit for our stone wall comes from Sheldane. Sheldon and Shane built the most AMAZING stone wall and gave us advice on how to build our own.
They are our near neighbors on our small island property. Like us, their property is nearly all rock and clay. Like us, they are DIY enthusiasts and gardeners. However, they don’t have kids, so they are WAY more productive than we are. 😉
I’m not an expert on anything historical (I leave that to Max) but I imagine that this is the sort of wall that farmers have been building for eons. The sort of wall that crisscrosses most of Ireland. Building a stone wall is an easy option when you have a lot of rocks that you need to move somewhere else.
Piled Stone Wall Building Technique
Our building method is ridiculously simple. It probably won’t stand up to an earthquake, but otherwise, it’s quite low maintenance. There are three parts to our stone wall-building technique.
1. Medium-sized framing rocks
The overall structure of the wall is made of medium-sized rocks. These are piled up to form the sides of the wall and the top of the wall. In general, it’s easier to use flat-sided rocks for the sides of the wall and save the round rocks for on top of the wall.
- Sheldon and Shane spent time carefully placing each rock to ensure stability. They also have the necessary tools to split and flatten rocks as needed.
- We had our kids build the wall as a “fun cottage activity!” The first part was built when they were 7 and 11 years old… so it was not built with stability in mind.
2. Small filler stones
The center of the wall is filled with small stones. These provide support for the medium-sized rocks. They move around to fill cracks and crevices and are easy for small children to carry. 😂
- Shane and Sheldon had a lot of garbage on their property. The center of their giant wall is filled with garbage (shards of porcelain from an old toilet, bits of metal, things like that). Who knew garbage could be so useful?
- We had plenty of small rocks that were perfect for the center of our wall. Every time we dug foundations or holes for our fruit trees we had more small stones.
3. Large support rocks
Occasionally, we would dig up a large rock. These were perfect for adding cross-sectional support for our wall. Large rocks were laid in the middle sections of the wall on top of a bed of small filler stones. These provided a bridge across the wall, connecting the two sides.
We didn’t have many of these, but whenever we did, we were sure to make use of them.
Why didn’t you use mortar?
Making a rock wall with mortar is an entirely different activity.
–> Our primary purpose was to do something interesting with the rocks we dug up every time we took a shovel to the ground. We wanted to build and expand our wall over several years.
–> A stone wall with mortar is probably stronger and more sturdy. But they are typically built across a single period and don’t provide quite so much storage space for small stones.
We did use mortar for one section of our wall. Our little free library was built into the wall. In that case, we created a cavity for the free library post. Filled the cavity with mortar. Then set the post in place.
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