The Wall Trivia Quiz

Answer: Hearting

Hedgerows are a familiar sight in the lowland areas of Britain, but it is the highlands, or uplands, including the south-west, the Pennines, the Lake District, the North-east, Wales and Scotland which have dry stone walls to demarcate an area of land. As suggested by their name, the walls have no mortar to bind them together. Dating back to the Iron Age, they were built to enclose animals or communities, and for dwellings such as houses and abbeys. There are roughly 180,000 miles of dry stone walling in the UK but unfortunately most are in a state of disrepair.

Building a dry stone wall is similar to creating a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. Firstly, a narrow trench is dug and then large foundation stones are laid at the base. Progressive layers are added, with each layer narrowing slightly towards the top. Risers, pinnings, tiestones and capstones are all familiar terms used in dry stone walling. As the wall is built, gaps in the interior of the wall, between the face stones, are tightly filled with smaller stones. The filling is called hearting. The tighter the hearting, the stronger the wall will become, and the longer it will last.

Answer: Scotland

Stone walls and features have been a popular sight in the lowlands and highlands of Scotland for centuries. The Roman emperor Hadrian built a defensive wall which stretched for 73 miles in the north of England, from the Irish Sea to the banks of the River Tyne near the North Sea. Antonine Wall, made from turf on a stone base, was a similar wall that was built 99 miles to the north of Hadrian's Wall, and stretched for 39 miles between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde.

The Celtic language of Scotland is still used today to describe many architectural and geographical features. A drystane dyke is a dry stone wall, a fank is a stone sheep enclosure, a sheiling is a small stone farm building, and a bucht is a stone sheepfold where ewes were once kept during milking time.

Answer: Cantilevered step

The most popular stile, many of which are still in use today, was an easy to create timber crossover or ladder stile. Another way to climb over dry stone walls was made possible by using cantilevered stone steps (as shown in the image), large boulder steps, or a 'v' shaped squeeze-stile. Cantilevered, or hanging, steps were large flat slabs placed at different heights as the wall was built. People were easily able to step over the wall from field to field without putting livestock at risk of running loose. Gates have been slowly replacing stiles due to health and safety reasons, with a British Standard procedure (BS5709:2006) stating "new structures shall not be stiles unless exceptional circumstances require them."

An old Mother Goose nursery rhyme mentions the use of the word "stile":

"There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in a little crooked house."

The crooked man was believed to be General Sir Alexander Leslie, a Scotsman who took an army to battle against England during the First English Civil War (1642-1646). It is believed the stile mentioned in the rhyme was not a passage from field to field, but the border between Scotland and England.

Answer: Pinfold

Pinfold was taken from the pre-7th century Olde English word "pundfald", meaning animal pound. A pinfold could be found in most medieval villages and varied in size, ranging from a small pen for two or three animals, up to as big as half an acre. The stone walled area was high enough to stop impounded cows, pigs and sheep from escaping, and was normally locked until the owner claimed the animal and paid a fine. Some owners tried to break into the pinfold to avoid paying.

The name of the person who rounded up the strays and looked after them was called a pinder. Records which date back to the 13th century show a Philip de la Pundfold and a Roger de la Pundfaude who appear respectively in the 1275 Hundred Rolls of Sussex and Oxfordshire. The Hundred Rolls were an early form of census. Many variants of the surname Pinder exist today and they include Pynder, Pinner, Pinter, Pennefold and Pender. There are road names in Britain called Pinder Lane and this derives from the old English trade name, likewise with some house names called Pinder House because they were once located next to the pinfold.

Answer: Sheep-creep

The sheep-creep is added during the construction of the wall by leaving a large enough gap for a small animal to amble through. A stone lintel would be placed above the opening to stop the upper part of the wall from collapsing. There were many names for these small holes, and these included hogg, lunky, smout, thawl, thirl and cripple hole. The names differ, all depending on which part of the country you live in. By allowing these holes, or passageways, the farmer would be able to let their sheep roam between one or more fields while still keeping larger cattle in the same enclosure. If they wanted to stop this movement at any time, the farmer would block the hole with a larger stone temporarily.

The practice used in medieval times is still used today. A modern equivalent allows free movement for animals to wander under major roads, canals, rivers and railways, without injury, and therefore benefitting from habitat conservation. Animals which use these special wildlife crossings include badgers, water voles, otters and hedgehogs, while larger tunnels allow herds to pass through.

Answer: Crinkle-crankle

The Romans introduced fired bricks to Europe, the thin slate-like bricks hand-made into sections known as bessalis (one foot), bipedalis (two foot) and sesquipedalis (between one and two foot). These bricks went into decline until our Flemish ancestors introduced the word 'waltyle' (wall tile) in the 15th century. Timber structures were still popular during the Tudor period until the Great Fire of London in 1666, after which it was decreed that stones or bricks should be used to build structures. Families set up brick kilns, and soon after we started to see the large stately homes built, surrounded by long brick walls to demarcate the land.

Crinkle-crankle walls have been around since the mid 17th century. The single layered wall was a way of economising on bricks, their wavy lines being more stable than a straight line. They were also known as wavy walls, serpentine walls and crinkum-crankum. Not only were the walls cheaper to build, they were also popular as an edging to kitchen gardens. The walls were usually built from east to west, their south facing convex and concave curves attracting warmth from the sunshine which was vital in fruit growing. The majority of crinkle-crankle walls were built in the Suffolk area and are still in existence today.

Answer: Bee bole

Before the introduction of bee hives, beekeepers would keep their bees in a domed straw hive with a cap over the top. These were called a skep and the person who made them was called a skepper. Skeps were prone to getting wet and rotted after a time, so bee boles were built into walls to protect them from the elements. Honey used to be an expensive commodity, and so bee boles would often have a secure metal bar placed across them to stop thieves from removing the skep. People went so far as to put wooden doors to protect them during the harsh winter months. There are localised names for a bee bole, and these include bee niches (Derbyshire), bee boxes (Kent), bee walls (Gloucestershire) and bee shells (Cumbria).

During their heyday (1800 to 1940), kitchen gardens provided the country home with a wealth of edible produce. The walled enclosure retained heat, creating a microclimate that allowed sustainable fruit, vegetables and herbs to grow all year round. Espaliers, or fruit trees trained to grow against a wall, became a popular sight. The kitchen garden wall at Eglington Country Park in Scotland was hollow inside. It had its own rustic temperature gauge for controlling the heat by way of movable blocks in the wall to control the temperature. If the blocks were removed to allow air through, the temperature of the wall would become lower, replace the blocks and the wall would retain its heat.

Answer: Ha-ha

A ha-ha is a wall with a sunken trench or ditch which is not visible until someone steps into it. They were built to separate the well-maintained gardens from the working park where cattle and deer roamed freely. Visitors would look from the house and the transition from landscaped garden to wilderness would have appeared seamless as the wall was hidden from view. It was only when you walked in the direction of the wall that would you see the sudden drop on the other side, sometimes up to nine or ten feet deep. People would be so surprised at finding the wall, they would suddenly exclaim "ha-ha!". (That's true, honestly!)

The ha-ha wall was mentioned in chapter nine of the 1814 published novel, "Mansfield Park", by Jane Austen. The main protagonist, Fanny Price, visited Sotherton Estate which was to be the new home for her recently married cousin. It was here that two other characters, Miss Crawford and Edmund Bertram, started a mild flirtation:

"After sitting a little while Miss Crawford was up again. "I must move," said she; "resting fatigues me. I have looked across the ha-ha till I am weary. I must go and look through that iron gate at the same view, without being able to see it so well."

Answer: Corpse

Most churchyards had a boundary to define the sacred area and these were typically made from dry stone walls. The lychgate was the route the corpse would be taken along before they were buried. With so many plagues during the 15th to the 17th centuries, lychgates became a common feature at the entrance to the church. People were carried across fields, covered in a shroud as coffins were not then used, before being placed on a bier underneath the covered gate. The priest would receive the corpse and carry out the first part of the service underneath the shelter.

Medieval burial grounds in urban locations would sometimes have retaining walls built to keep the overflowing corpses from falling into the street. This was due to the ground being continuously raised as corpses were buried one on top of another. Rural locations had retaining walls to keep wild animals and livestock away from the sacred ground, although some sheep were used to keep the grass levels down. The famous architect, Sir Christopher Wren, once wrote:

"It will be inquired, where then shall be the burials? I answer, in cemeteries seated in the outskirts of the town. A piece of ground of two acres in the fields will be purchased for much less than two roads among the buildings: this being enclosed with a strong brick wall and having a walk round and two crosswalks decently planted with yew trees, the four quarters may serve four parishes, where the dead need not be disturbed at the pleasure of the sexton or piled four or five upon one another-or bones thrown out to gain room."

Answer: Kissing gate

Kissing gates have been a familiar sight in rural Britain for a number of years, although it is uncertain when they first appeared. There is a reference to these fixtures in the 1912 poem "The Third Kissing-Gate" written by Thomas Hardy (see below). Many people have put a romantic connotation on the term "kissing gate" but the origin of the name is much more ordinary. The noun "kiss" is used in this context to describe the way the gate gently kisses, or touches, the posts on either side as they swing open and closed. The wrought iron metal, or sometimes wooden, gate is simple to use and will allow a person but not livestock to pass through. Traditional gates are slowly being replaced with wider versions to allow wheelchair and pushchair access so that more people can enjoy our beautiful countryside.

"The Third Kissing-Gate" by Thomas Hardy

"She foots it forward down the town,
Then leaves the lamps behind,
And trots along the eastern road
Where elms stand double-lined.

She clacks the first dim kissing-gate
Beneath the storm-strained trees,
And passes to the second mead
That fringes Mellstock Leaze.

She swings the second kissing-gate
Next the gray garden-wall,
And sees the third mead stretching down
Towards the waterfall.

And now the third-placed kissing-gate
Her silent shadow nears,
And touches with; when suddenly
Her person disappears.

What chanced by that third kissing-gate
When the hushed mead grew dun?
Lo - two dark figures clasped and closed
As if they were but one."