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The wall stops at the New York State Thruway. In the video above you can
stroll across the whole length of the Storm King wall ending in a
view of the wall emerging from the water on the other side of the
river.
Andy Goldsworthy has inspired many natural
builders, among them
Dean McLellan and
John Rimmington who together built their own version of the Storm
King, a
dry stone wall in Canada.
At its base, a dry stone wall needs to be at least
45cm (18 inches) wide. To provide the necessary strength and stability, a
dry stone wall should also taper in from the base to its top (see
left). The
precise taper is not critical but it should be at least 2-3cm (1 inch) for every
60 cm (2
ft) in height. In fact many dry stone walls are twice as wide at
the base as they are at the top. Stones are
selected and placed in such a way that they interlock. The
stability and strength of the wall comes from a combination of the
interlocking stones and the compression due to their weight.
Properly built, walls like these can last for many hundreds of
years.
In the video left, Derbyshire dry stone mason
Trevor Wragg explains the techniques of dry stone wall building
 these
beautiful structures. Trevor can build about 4m (12ft) of wall per
day. Each meter (yard) uses about one ton of stone. To repair a 4m
stretch of wall in one day he will dismantle 4 tons of stone and
re-build it moving a total of 8 tons of stone by hand. |
