Episode 5: The Dry Stone Waller

Bryn Calloway builds walls that hold together by nothing but weight and arrangement. No mortar, no cement, no glue of any kind. A good one, he says, should still be standing when his grandchildren's grandchildren have forgotten the name of the farm it crosses.

About this episode

I spent a drizzly Tuesday in a field with Bryn and his wall. He was rebuilding a collapsed stretch about eight metres long, and he talked the whole time without once looking up from the stone. This is the longest conversation of the season, and the one I'd hand to a friend first.

We cover how a wall is actually made: two faces leaning gently inward, a core packed with small stone, and long "through" stones that tie the two sides together. We also cover the rule that gives the episode its title in my head, which is that you should only pick up a stone once you know where it's going. Touch it twice and you've wasted a lift.

Chapters

• 00:00 The field, the rain, the pile

• 05:30 Reading a heap of stone like a menu

• 13:10 Two faces and a heart: how the wall stands

• 21:45 The through stone and why he keeps one in his pocket

• 30:00 Mistakes that show up ten years later

• 38:20 A wall as a conversation with the dead

• 46:00 Capstones, and the satisfaction of finishing

• 52:15 Bryn answers three listener questions

The guest

Bryn Calloway runs Calloway Walling, a firm of three that repairs boundary walls across several valleys. He learned from his father, who learned from a neighbour, and he's slightly embarrassed to admit he can't remember who taught that neighbour. He likes tea strong and conversation slow.

A passage I keep rereading.

You don't beat the stone. You listen to it for a bit, and then you ask it to sit down.

He said it half-laughing, nudging a flat piece into a gap. I wrote it on my hand because I'd lost my notebook in the grass.

Things Bryn mentioned

• The wall he rebuilt after a flood, and the single stone that survived it

• Frost, which he treats as a colleague with poor manners

• A competition he lost by forty points and won by being asked back

• Why he never signs his work, though every waller leaves a recognisable hand

Credits and notes

Hosted and produced by Ines Tallgren. Field recording assisted by Teodor Basile, whom you met in episode 2. Thanks to Bryn, his dog, and the farmer who let us stand in his mud.

One more episode left in the season. It's a look back at the voices we've heard so far and some of the things you wrote in.