Narrow road, small car, Peak District.

[Duncan Grimmond]

While out walking or driving I’ve often tried to calculate how long it took to build the miles and miles of dry-stone walls that exist in eg the Yorkshire Dales National park. At approximately a ton per yard, the miles and miles of walling that can be seen from almost any high point continues to astonish me. Is this what the farm labourers did in the winter? At say 2-3 yards a day for two men a single mile must have taken 600 days? Clearing the stones from the fields must have taken years in itself, when did they start the work? 12thC?15th C? Having finished the cathedrals did the workforce turn to walling while the masons went in to the next ecclesiastical project? Or as a result of the enclosures Act in the 18thC? The population must have been either huge (cf Cobbett) with unemployment massive or tiny (more likely cf Malthus) and in need of a respite from idleness?
The numbers are beyond my ken! I suppose I could Google it but trying work it out while walking is more interesting! Sad old git on a ramble, sorry! I’ll get on with some work!