These photographs of stone walls in New England by William Hubbell are from his book, Good Fences: A Pictorial History of New England’s Stone Walls. See more of Hubbell’s photography at hubbellphotography.com.
The voices you hear are Yankee‘s Justin Shatwell talking to University of Connecticut geologist Robert Thorson, of The Stone Wall Initiative.
Read Yankee‘s March/April 2009 article on Robert Thorson, “New England’s Stone Wall Defender.”
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Wonderful! Makes me want to visit these special places!
As I walk the country roads near our home in Southern Herkimer County, N.Y. I see the remants of these wonderful, difficult to contruct, walls our ancestors built. There are so few masons today who can reconstruct them.
I’ve built a small stone wall or two in my younger days – it is truly an art, and if I could afford one of the ones ‘for sale’ I’d buy it! They are treasures.
I have a stone wall that borders my land. This used to be a horse farm many years ago. The squirrels love running up & down to get to different trees. It definitely defines our land plus you can see there used to be a road, probably during the horse and buggy days as there is another stone wall that borders the other land and by the age of the trees that have grown, you know it has been a long time sine it was used as a road.
I grew up in Colchester Connecticut and we had stone walls everywhere. Now that I am living in Ohio, I find I miss them. We had chickens that used to jump on the rock wall and them jump to roost in the tree. We also had a dog who got so excited when we came home, she would leap over the stone wall as she ran around the yard. Your pictures made me homesick
Such walls are not limited to New England. Virginia, and specifically Northern Virginia – not the area near the beltway- has many fine examples. I am always mesmirized by them and believe they do hold so much history. A neighbor near the Potomac River has started a new wall in Great Falls, VA, and I hope it is there for many years to come.
Some of my most cherished memorys are of gathering stones from the feilds with my Grandpa and stacking those to build fences in Western NY. These stone walls are part of our history,ad so beautiful to look at. I hope to someday find a homesite for myself that has one on it.
My husband was born and raised in the Swansea, Mass. area, and his home was surrounded by an old stone wall, which also ran down the road all the way to the water. His sister and other family members homes nearby also had the old stone walls. I loved sitting on them when we would visit and have family dinners outside. Great memories.
When we lived in Nashua,traveling around the area_seeing the Stone Walls was fascinating to me.Growing up in Texas_it was something rarely seen.However,having studied some Irish History_I was reminded of those walls built across Ireland.It gives one the feel of Old World serenity.We in fact have a mini-stone wall on our farm here in Texas to remind us of their charm and grace.
Just beautiful. I have a lot of stone on my land….how strong is my back?
I grew up in So. Weymouth, MA. There is a cemetery, from the 1600′s, across the street from my neighborhood that is fronted by a wonderful stone wall. My friends and I sat on it every morning for six years waiting for the school bus to pick us up.
There is nothing more exciting than walking in the woods and finding a stone wall. I love to look around and imagine the fields that were once there and through time have been reclaimed by the forest. They must have a thousand stories to tell.