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Laid wall on inside of barn foundation with subsequent application of mortar, Mansfield Depot, CT.
 

Prupose of Stone Walls -- Primer

Any individual stone wall can be built for any purpose. However, when speaking of the general phenomenon of fieldstone farmstead walls, history gives us a sequence of three principal purposes: farmstead objects; material resources, and ruins & wildness.

FARMSTEAD OBJECTS

The majority stone walls were built during the 18th and 19th centuries in association with a widely distributed, agricultural economy. They served three principal functions: holding waste stone, the control of property, and expressing human values through architecture.

  • DISPOSAL . Walls were most often initially built to hold the non-biodegradable agricultural refuse we refer to as stone or rock. They chopped, burned, and skidded away the trees. They picked and scuttled the stone, usually to the nearest pile and fenceline.

  • CONTROL. Much of the stone was used for some expedient purpose having to do with private property. Most of it was used to subdivide property (boundary markers, field subdivisions, and livestock enclosure). Much of theremainder was used for the construction of foundations, retaining walls, and other engineered structures.

  • EXPRESSION. Nearly all stonework reflects a personal/cultural overlay, which involves conscious and subconscious patterning and style of the stone in the form of folk art

Historically, the purpose of disposal usually preceded the purpose of control, which preceded the purpose of expression. Historically, walls were usually built for just one purpose, but served all functions simultaneously.

MATERIAL RESOURCE

Beginning in the middle19th century, much of this rural land in interior New England was abandoned, allowing forest to return. Near cities and centers of wealth, however, walls continued to be built, but for architectural, rather than agricultural reasons. The building up of industrial cities, the growth of rail transport, and the improvement of roads for early automobiles too place before the widespread use of concrete, asphalt pavement, iron, and plastic as building mateirals. Hence the buildup of the cities, shoreline tourist sites, and the transportation infrastructure between them raised the demand for stone as a building resource.

Stone was harvested from roadside walls and crushed for subgrade, picked form fields to form piers, jetties, and ridges, and generally used. On farms where larger equipment was now operating, many walls were used for fill or were buried as drains for agricultural fields.

WILDNESS AND RUIN

Stone walls are now valued principally for their ecological and cultural roles. A stone wall in the woods is a ruin, reminding of us where we came from. This is an aesthetic purpose. It is also habitat for creatures that would otherwise not have home, a corridor for their travel, or a boundary to their lives. This is an ecological purpose.

In modern life, we need to share the world with those who came before us, and with the creatures that live around us. To transform an old wall into a decoration is to bring ruin to a necessary ruin, and to make the woodland habitat more bland.

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