This project is current and ongoing. From initial inspection, everything about it promised to be epic. For a start, the area to be repaired was totally hidden by the overgrowth. Next to that, one could see the remaining dry stone retaining wall which stood at three and a half metres tall, rising from the banks of the River Spodden. So straight away, the back of the mind started juggling ladders versus scaffolding - in the end ladders won the contest.

As with all these projects, things got progressively interesting the more I worked at it. The stripping of the collapsed section alone, presented all sorts of questions:

• Why was there so much earth amongst the stone & how to manage it all along the river bank?
• How come there was so much old-school building rubble and signs of past living (pieces of carpets, parts of floor lamps, pans, etc) mixed in with the earth?
• What was the perpendicular cavity behind the wall as low down as two and a half metres below the top of the wall?
• Was there really a coursed wall lining the one side of the said cavity?

Such questions can only heighten one’s sense of intrigue and interest. The short answer turned out to be that, there used to be buildings (possibly houses) here once upon a time during the industrial age.

And yet, the assignment was not to inquire about the past so I got on with the reason I’d been commissioned for. The rebuild of this collapsed section of giant dry stone retaining wall was very process led and the full story is best told in pictures.