The cover of How to Build Dry-Stacked Stone Walls: Design and Build Walls, Bridges and Follies Without Mortar by Firefly Books displays a skillfully crafted stone wall amid green grass, with the author’s name at the bottom.
Firefly Books How to Build Dry-Stacked Stone Walls is your step-by-step guide to designing and building walls, bridges, and follies without mortar—covering sorting, laying stone, leveling gravel, and teamwork in the garden.
A two-page spread in How to Build Dry-Stacked Stone Walls by Firefly Books details step-by-step images and instructions for building a stone arch using dry-stacked masonry, highlighting close-ups of stone placement on a wooden form and the finished arch.
A stone footbridge with a curved arch and dry-stacked stone walls—like those in Firefly Books How to Build Dry-Stacked Stone Walls—spans a shallow rock-lined stream, amid tall grass and dense vegetation. A Springdale Bridge info sign is on the right.
Four people constructing a dry-stacked stone wall outdoors, with tools and rocks nearby. The image appears beside text from How to Build Dry-Stacked Stone Walls by Firefly Books, a guide to building mortarless walls, bridges, and follies.
A close-up of a herringbone-patterned dry-stacked stone wall built into grassy ground, with an informational panel on the right. Learn more in How to Build Dry-Stacked Stone Walls by Firefly Books.

How to Build Dry-Stacked Stone Walls: Design and Build Walls, Bridges and Follies Without Mortar

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How to Build Dry-Stacked Stone Walls shows how to build a wall using the traditional method of dry stone masonry in which carefully selected stones are properly stacked and held together without mortar. As well as being beautiful, a dry stone wall is stronger, more stable, and more resistant to climate than a mortared wall.

The book features more than 100 full color photographs of walls, bridges and decorative garden elements in various steps of construction as well as illustrations that show the steps and cross sections that illustrate the building methods.

Author John Shaw-Rimmington explains how to build a dry stacked stone wall, coursed walling, bridges, follies and more. He explains the important principles that contribute to the structural integrity of each.

He covers all of the essential elements of dry stone building:

  • Design
  • The foundation
  • Packing or backfilling within the wall
  • Slope of a wall face, an "A" profile provides stability
  • Bridge stones that span the width of the wall
  • Coping, the top stones of a wall
  • Weight-bearing stones in an arch, bridge, dome, etc.

Shaw-Rimmington then guides the reader through the building process. With dedication to the task and the author's experienced guidance, the only limit is imagination.

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