STONE FENCES, NORTH STONINGTON CONNECTICUT

Running along many rural roads of New England, stone fences are a ubiquitous part of the architectural landscape. Most folks, including ancient locals, refer to these as 'walls,' but they are quite wrong in their terminology.

A wall is built to keep things out; a fence keeps them in.

And though these fences do both, they were originally built to keep livestock from wandering onto the neighboring farm, where they might be claimed. Ben Franklin said "Good fences make good neighbors." It was these to which he was referring.

New England is underlain with granite, schist, gneiss, marble, slate, and all manner of hard rocks that seem to surface every year in plowed fields. The farmer of yesteryear (it's true today as well) knew that before the ground thawed but the field was snow-free enough to locate the stones, he and his hands would begin the yearly task of removing those that surfaced during the freeze/thaw cycle of winter. They loaded them on wide, heavy, low sleds and used the ice-slick ground to transport them with a minimum of friction and effort to the borders of those fields.

It was a hell of a lot easier to drag those sleds to the edge of the field than to a single point elsewhere, so the borders of those fields were demarcated with runs of stone, killing two birds with one stone (well, lots of them, actually). Unknown to most alive today, those fences were often topped with split wood rails to keep anything from jumping them. All wood has since rotted away, but the stones remain as a testament to past farmers' efforts to keep their fields clear.

Some are haphazard, laid with the clearing of the field in mind. Some are carefully constructed from selected sizes and contours to create an artistic, efficient design to please the eye.

 

And if you look carefully, you'll sometimes find fine veins of large crystals running through them. Known as 'pegmatite,' this is where gas bubbles in the molten granite allowed for larger crystal growth into the voids created by the gas. It cooled quicker, causing the crystals to grow in size.

 

Occasionally, road work or neglect or erosion brings these walls down.

Then professional fence builders (masons to you and me, but a special breed of them) are called in.

No stone sleds are needed today; track hoes outfitted with lobster claws make the job much easier.

                 David Higginbotham and his excellent helper rebuilding an ancient stone fence

 

 It is a matter of both physics and personal choice as to how to rebuild them, and common knowledge has the largest on the bottom, the medium sizes getting smaller towards the top, and the longest used as capstones to prevent as much erosion as possible. Then smaller pieces are used as chinking in the voids between the larger stones.