30 years experience in the traditional skill of Dry Stone Dyking
James Y. Watt – Dry Stone Dyking is based in Aberdeenshire. Garden walls, garden features, new build or repair. Traditional dry stone, cement or lime mortar. Pillars, dyke ends or gate supports in different styles. James Y. Watt – Dry Stone Dyking has instructed on courses for The Bennachie Centre, The National Trust of Scotland and for private landowners.
Dry stone dyking/walling is an ancient skill, dating back hundreds of years. Traditionally walls were made with land gatherings. Field dykes are usually built from this locally freely available material. Dry stone walls or dry stane dykes, as they are more commonly called in Scotland, were originally constructed, to enclose land for livestock. Homes were built on the same principle. Some old Scottish dry stone dykes are made in a random rubble style or as a coursed stone dyke with more evenly matched cope stones on the top. Some dry stone dykes were deliberately constructed in such a way as to allow water through the dyke. This would allow any surface water to drain away. Large boulders were placed in such a pattern as to create natural holes within the dry stone wall.
Consumption dykes such as the one near Kingswells, Aberdeen were constructed to use up, or consume, all the land gatherings which would have otherwise amassed in untidy large piles on the edges of fields, where it would take up valuable arable ground. The Kingswells’ consumption dyke is now a listed monument. James Y. Watt repaired the dyke early on in his professional career. James Y. Watt Dry Stane Dyking covers a wide area of North East Scotland including Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire and most of Moray. James Watt’s dry stane dyking expertise has been sought as far afield as the Provencal village of Cereste in the south of France.