Wall and Arch Workshop at Island Stone Landscape Supply on Vancouver Island

Date: 
Thursday, February 18, 2010 to Friday, February 19, 2010
Location: 
Island Stone Landscape Supply 6892 Ark Rd
Type: 
Beginner Seminar
Status: 
Completed

 

 

 

 

Based on the regularity of thin shapes and sizes of stones made available by Island Stone, the students at the DSWAC workshop near Shawnigan Lake B.C. were given the opportunity to build a new dry stone wall in this unusual herringbone style.

About the herringbone pattern

 Usually any kind of construction can be made stronger if you incorporate a diagonal element. In a herringbone dry stone wall the dynamic force of each stone placed at an angle is carried along the length of the wall rather than just downwards. Every stone you place by hand puts weight on its neighbour, whereas regular horizontal coursing leaves adjacent stones 'disconnected' with only the spanning weight of a few stones laid above them to keep them secure.

Many dry stone walls in Cornwall incorporate the herringbone pattern

The parallel cleavage planes of the natural slate and shale stone found in some parts of Cornwall England, are often quite thin, and demand this radically different pattern of Cornish hedging. The flat smallish stones require great skill to build with because they are so thin. They are sometimes soft too, breaking easily under the weight of those above, and often slippery, so the hedge sides more easily develop a bulge; a badly-built slate hedge soon falls down. To counteract these tendencies this unusual way of building with shale and slate evolved to produce walls which are properly called 'claddiau' (one wall is a called a clawdd) 

 

Several students gather at the end of the second day to view the other side of their new wall. 

 

 

 

 

Work in progress, showing one of the throughstones we used in the herringbone style dry stone wall that was built by DSWAC students last weekend on Vancouver Island.

Students from Vancouver Island and Salt Springs Island and Whistler, BC completed a 30 foot length of herringbone wall with gothic arch using random basalt stone provided by Island Stone Supply on Saturday February 21st, 2010

 

Here is a shot taken when after lunch on Friday February 19th at the DSWAC workshop near Shawnigan Lake B.C. Canada. 

 

 

 

 

We will be runing another workshop in September 2010 on the Island in Metchosin at their annual green festival. Check back to the DSWAC site for details 

 

 

Island Stone yard is about 1.2km west of the South Shawnigan Lake exit off the Trans Canada Hwy.

From Victoria it is a 20 minute drive