MANY years ago I wrote a booklet about Austwick and used the title “Cuckoo Town”. There was a fanciful old tale about the “carles” of this North Craven village who built a wall around a tree on which a cuckoo had gone to roost. The cuckoo had been sent to bring good weather so they must try and keep the bird at Austwick the winter through. They did not succeed.

Walls built round trees on the Malham Tarn estate had nothing to do with restraining the movements of cuckoos. They were designed to prevent sheep from browsing or de-barking young trees. A number of walled-in trees may be seen between Great Scar and the Tarn.

George Horner, signalman at Blea Moor box on the Settle-Carlisle line, mentioned some footloose sheep that were born beside the tracks, on the wrong side of drystone walls. It was suggested that these sheep should be provided with timetables!

Walls made without a dab of mortar jostle round our Craven farmsteads and villages. They also pattern the fells. To visitors they are a source of wonder. An American tourist called them “those cute stone fences”. Norman Nicholson, one of my favourite north-country poets, began one of his poems with the notion that the wall “walks the fells”. It is a “grey millipede on slow stone hooves.”

A drystone wall may look rigid – but it gives. One of my old farming friends said: “I’ve got a wall that shuffles. Then it gives.” It had become “gapped” to use a local term. There are various hues according to the geological setting. I enjoy seeing the pearl-grey of limestone walls at the head of Malhamdale. They are rarely just grey. Like the chameleon they respond tonally to conditions of light and weather. On a sunny day in spring a limestone wall looks bone-white. As sunset approaches in thundery weather, they become pink or purple. When the fellside is snowy, there is a wall pattern in black.

The “golden age” of walling extended from about 1750 until 1840. This was the heyday of the Enclosure Awards. William Bray, an 18th century traveller through the dale-country, wrote of pastures that had, in recent times, “been lately divided by stone walls of about two yards high, one yard wide at the bottom, lessening to a foot at the top.” He calculated that a good waller might assemble a stretch of about seven yards in a single day.

Marie Hartley and Joan Ingilby, who wrote extensively about the Dales, related that two brothers who lived at Arncliffe devoted themselves to wall-building on the “tops” in summer and to odd-jobbing in winter. When walling, they would leave home at 7am taking with them some food – usually a loaf and some onions. Two roods of wall might be built during a long summer day.

In poor weather, a waller might be seen wearing an ex-Army greatcoat or he might have an old sack round his shoulders. Any waller who donned gloves or mittens was considered to be a cissy. Among the old-time wallers of North Ribblesdale was Dave Hannam. He constructed the six-foot high wall across the top of Penyghent.

In about the year 1860, according to local folk memory, Dave walked from his home at Horton to the top of Penyghent to do the work. For his effort he was paid half-a-crown for a rood of seven yards.

Among the interesting features of drystone walls is the cripple hole. It allows the passage of sheep but not cows from one pasture to another. Mixed grazing was possible. Such a hole is built with two wallheads and a lintel, sometimes two lintels if a long stone could not be found. Old railway sleepers had been used for this purpose. When not in use, a cripple hole was covered by a piece of flagstone or a wooden pallet. Sometimes a spiky bush might be pushed into the hole.

Some old green tracks in the vicinity of Settle have underpasses. Stock was able to pass from one side to the other without crossing the road or track. At one point between Stackhouse and Knight Stainforth the free movement of stock was provided so that cattle might drink in the River Ribble.

Walls made without a dab of mortar add character to a Craven landscape.