Much of the appeal of the dale-country for the thousands of tourists who are now wandering through the region is in the pattern of walls made without a dab of mortar.

Walls divide up the land. They also accentuate the contours. They are both useful and decorative.

The dedication of skilled wallers is nowhere more apparent than on the steepest ground, where walls seem to stand on end. Old walls create a fine pattern near the villages. The walls of the great enclosures form a gridiron pattern on the hillsides.

I commended the work of a gap-waller who worked as we chatted. He looked embarrassed, as all true craftsmen and women do when praised. Said the waller: "lvvery cobble has its face."

He paused. Several more stones were place. The waller then added: "Aye, lad - ivvery cobble has its face, but it isn't any fool can find it."

I recalled an encounter with a fell farmer in upper Swaledale who, having come across a gap in one of his drystone walls, "single-jammied it up a bit". This meant he was replacing just enough stones to "stop any animals gitting ower". At the first opportunity, he would make a proper job of it.

In the Dales, the chief thing about a gap in a wall is - get it up! The native sheep will not only use it to extend their territory. They will make it bigger.

"A good wall," said the farmer, "is t'cheapest form of fencing. If owt happens to it, you don't have to run off to town to get some more material. Stuff's lying about, waiting to be re-used. They have a fancy word for it now. It's called re-cycling."

An experienced waller nivver picks t'same cobble up twice. Years ago, when Yorkshire Television set about filming Geoff Lund, a champion waller in Wharfedale, he obligingly pulled down several courses of the wall to give him something to do before the camera.

As the visitors fiddled with their camera and sound equipment and exposure-meter, Geoff's restless hands built the wall up again. It happened a second time before they were ready to film.

Geoff was working by "t'rack o' t'eye" and not with a tape measure or set-square. His eyes moved fractionally ahead of his gnarled hands. He prided himself on not picking up the same stone twice. More than stones might be found in a Dales drystone wall. Blackbirds and thrushes nest in cavities under some of the big topstones. My Swaledale friend remarked: "They have a good stone roof over them. It's their way o' nesting where there nobbut a few trees."

Bits of crockery, broken during a haytime meal, found its way into cracks and crannies in walls. An old chap with a small farm usually took a bottle of home-made beer with him when working the fields. "When he'd supped it, he didn't take the bottle back. He put it in the nearest gap in a wall."

Bottles were also stuffed in the walls of sheep pens. They were conveniently out of sight. If a stretch of wall shuttered down, his successor found himself with lots of broken glass to clear away.

A wall is really two walls in one, tapering as it gains height, each joint firmly crossed and the two sides bound together with big stones known as throughs, or "truffs" in Swaledale. In this northern dale, capstones are called "top-steans".

John Geldard, who farmed at Malham for many a year, told me that a century and more ago, a Malham farmer named Johnny Walker who could not afford to pay a man's wage always had a lad fresh from school. His wage was next to nothing.

The farmer trained a succession of lads to wall. He was a tough taskmaster who would go with a lad once or twice and demonstrate walling. "This was not the way to train anyone. Making a wall is not like an assembly kit where you have to follow instructions. Practice makes for perfection."

One day, when a gap was filled and the young man had the wall to the right height, Johnny noticed some stones remained. He told the lad: "Tha'll have to pull it down again. Them stones were in t'wall before it fell and they should all go back."

The lad, though heartbroken, did as he was told. Next time, he didn't have quite enough stones to make a neat job of the wall. He had been determined not to have any left. There was a slight dip so the farmer insisted he pulled the wall down again. "Third time of building it, he just managed."

The walls and outbarns are major features of our glorious Dales landscape. Should the walls be allowed to crumble on a large scale, the region would assume an untidy, careworn appearance. And stock-farming as we know it today would not be possible.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.