Yorkshire's Best Guides

14 hours ago

The Yorkshire Blue Badge Guides have a stand at The Yorkshire Heritage Summit at Hull Minster on Saturday 11th May and some of our members have helped organise the event.

It would be great if you are in the area to come along and say hello. We have Hull Maritime White Badge Guides running FREE Hull Maritime Heritage walking tours throughout the day which you can sign up for own our stand.

British Guild of Tourist Guides Blue Badge Tourist Guides and Friends' Trivia North East England Tourist Guides Cumbria Blue Badge Tourist Guides Hull Old Town Hull What's On Visit Hull & East Yorkshire Hull Museums Yorkshire Archaeological & Historical Society Yorkshire Bylines I'm From Yorkshire ... See MoreSee Less

Yorkshire's Best Guides

3 days ago

Ribblehead Viaduct from Park Fell in the Yorkshire Dales @yorkshiredales #ribbleheadviaduct #yorkshire #walkshire #yorkshirewalks #ribblehead #yorkshiredales #yorkshiredalesnationalpark #viewsofyorkshire #imagesofyorkshire #viaduct ... See MoreSee Less

Yorkshire's Best Guides

5 days ago

How many miles of dry stone walls are there in the Yorkshire Dales? How long does it take to wall a metre? How old are the oldest ones?

Dry stone walls are one of the Yorkshire Dales' most distinctive features, and some of the oldest man-made landscape features. It's believed there are over 5000 miles (8000 km) of dry stone walls in the Yorkshire Dales. Not all of them are in tip-top condition but most are well maintained. Some of the walls around Langcliffe are believed to date back to the 13th century, built to deter wolves!

The very first dry stones walls were probably created centuries ago when early farmers were clearing the land for cultivation. Some walls are really thicker than might seem necessary, just because they were built in very stony areas. Most walls are built to mark field boundaries or mark land ownership, and limit movement by sheep and cows.

When on a tour of his farm at The Wensleydale Experience, Adrian Thornton-Berry showed me some very straight walls rising up the hill near Swinithwaite and said they were built around 200 years ago by French prisoners of war taken from Napoleon's army. Nearby are some large block foundations to a wall that date back to the times of the Knights Templar...

If you see very large stones being used as the base of the wall, that's often an indication of a wall that may date back to medieval times. Straight walls and fields that seem more uniform may date back to the Enclosures period of the late 18th and early 19th century.

Dry stone walls are 'dry' because they are made without mortar, simply relying on their complex structure to stay up. They take time to build, around 3-7 metres (depending who you ask and how experienced they are!) of wall in a day. That's about a ton of stone per metre, all lifted by hand!

A good dry stone waller never picks up a piece of stone twice but is able to look at a pile of walling stone and pick up the right size and shape of stone every time. A well built wall should easily last for more than 100 years, with minimal maintenance.

The foundation course usually consists of larger stones, upon which two wall faces are built, forming a cavity which is filled will smaller stones. Walls are finished or capped with large stones laid at an angle or on edge. Through stones bind the two wall faces together. If you look at walls in different parts of the Dales, you'll notice small differences in their construction. If you compare the Dales dry stone walls to those in Devon and Cornwall and you'll notice a very different style.

You can see demonstrations of dry stone walling at agricultural shows through out the Dales during the Summer months, and learn more about thurles, batter and smoots, cripple holes, sheep creeps & throughs. ... See MoreSee Less

Yorkshire's Best Guides

6 days ago

Bluebells near Roseberry Topping Hill, North Yorkshire , Teesside . 💜💙💚 ... See MoreSee Less