Welcome!
We are the South West England Branch of the Dry Stone Walling Association GB www.dswa.org.uk/
Whether you want to come on a dry stone walling course, are trying to find a professional dry stone waller or are just interested in conserving these vital features of our landscape, we hope you will find what you are looking for. If not, please let us know, as we are always trying to improve our site.
Across the UK, there are over 150,000 miles of wall in a state of disrepair. The members of South West England Dry Stone Walling Association try to do their bit to rebuild some of those across the South West of England. Here’s an example of a wall on Mendip that had suffered the ravages of time and which was rebuilt by a group of novices on one of our courses – in the words of the song, what a difference a day makes!
Walling isn’t difficult (although some liken it to doing a three dimensional jigsaw puzzle with no picture on the box). It’s an ideal hobby – you don’t really need any special tools, equipment or clothing; you don’t have to be super fit (although it’s great exercise); it’s sociable and you are helping to conserve an important landscape feature and wildlife habitat.
Our week-end courses are ideal for anyone who would like to ‘have a go’, either because they have a wall that needs rebuilding or because they are considering walling as a hobby or a new career option.
And if you then get the walling bug, you can join SWEDSWA and attend branch practice sessions throughout the year to improve your skills (you can also work towards gaining LANTRA certification). We’re a sociable lot, with at least two social events each year based around a pub lunch and external speaker…. and it’s usually essential to round off a successful day’s walling with a post mortem of the day’s activities in the pub.
And here’s a video that we had made to explain a bit more about why walls are SO important to the landscape…