A reviving stone wall in Elora, Ontario

"when anything has to be renewed....the only question asked is how little it can be done for, so as to tide us over our responsibility and shift its mending on to the next generation." 
William Morris

Elora Gorge: deep channels carved out of ancient limestone

I've been going to Elora for over fifty years now, drawn there by the beauty of its setting above a deep river gorge and its collection of well-maintained stone buildings from the nineteenth century. Elora is a place with period ambience that's still largely unspoiled. My first trip to this small Ontario village was actually to swim in an abandoned quarry alongside the Grand River.

As I recall, it was an unusually hot June and we had decided to play hooky from studying for final exams to find a swimming hole in the untypical heat. There was talk of an abandoned stone quarry near Elora that had high walls and deep, clear water, which turned out to be a thrilling place for jumping and diving (it wasn't fenced-off then). To get there from Waterloo, you drove through the village of Elora, a revelation that immediately caught my imagination because it seemed authentically from another time. It's a mix of mostly older stone and brick buildings in good repair that haven't been infilled with many clashing modern intrusions. And the physical surroundings are dead lovely too.


Elora developed where it is in order to take advantage of its riverside setting, formed by a deep gorge cutting through a massive limestone deposit that's over 400-million years old. The natural run of the river offered a harnessable energy source to drive large-scale machinery.

Water-driven grist mills and sawmills, with later electrical power generation, formed the basis of a thriving economy, and houses, like the one below, came to adorn the river's high banks. Limestone extracted from the gorge and the quarry was artfully worked by Scottish settlers into the solid houses and commercial buildings that still anchor the village character today. The buildings and town form these Scots achieved with local limestone, so different from their much harder native stone, continues to be viable, serving for decades as a tourism-magnet and now en route to becoming a residential enclave. The use made of limestone for building is direct and honest, sometimes fashioned into dimensional blocks for cottages, but as often worked as irregularly shaped pieces in a cement matrix (see below). The effect is solid and pleasing to the eye.

A solid home for a prospering member of the Elora community in the nineteenth century

A structure that may have been an inn has been recycled as a bed and breakfast

The highway to Elora snakes its way through the outskirts of the community, winding past trim stone cottages and the occasional inn while tracing the contours of the land. The stone buildings we passed on my first visit made a lasting impression. I also recall glimpsing a long, curving wall running in front of several stone cottages. Walls aren't a rarity in this part of Ontario, but this one's extent impresses and adds a considerable charm. Subsequently Elora beckoned me back to explore and enjoy, time and again, eventually becoming a place I would choose to visit in order to wander in surroundings redolent of the past. The Elora experience was enriched in the late sixties with the recycling of some of its buildings as studios and workshops for potters, woodworkers and other artists, reinforcing it as an artistic destination. In time I came to know that long stone wall better and found myself checking in on it to see how it was aging and changing. The wall was unremarkable in character yet unique in form, lending definition to the contoured landscape. Its gradually curving extent generates a secure effect by fitting perfectly into its setting.

A long wall that runs with the land's contour

 

Today's sidewalk post-dates the wall, but traces its lead

I don't recall when I started examining this wall more carefully, but at that moment I stopped taking it in as a scenic whole and began trying to discern what still showed of its actual composition. At first glance, its overall effect is similar to that of Elora's many stone buildings, which tend towards limestone's neutral buff-grays. On closer examination, it's apparent this wall has been subject to many interventions over its long life, and to such an extent now that the interventions obscure much of what it originally was. While intact in outline, its original look is now pretty much covered with cement. Realizing this, I worried that continued entombing in response to new breaches would one day obscure even its outline. And yet beneath all that accumulated gunk the wall's real character lay buried. I couldn't help wondering whether it was doomed to stay that way or one day somehow it would be rescued? Increasing care was certainly being taken with repair of many of Elora's stone buildings, but walls often suffer from indifference.

Stone cottages sitting behind secure perimeter walls, the handiwork of Scottish immigrants

I assumed the accretion of all that cement meant that new cracks must be regularly appearing and that homeowners were just doing what they could to keep the wall intact and prevent dilapidation. But this utilitarian approach to repair came at the cost of obscuring the presentation face of the stones, submerging them to the point of disappearance. The next picture gives an idea of the aesthetic results of a great many quick fixes.

This wall is now a monotone gray from all the cement slopped on it over the years

In fact, there's now so much cement slathered over the wall's numerous joints that it's challenging to gain a sense of what it originally looked like. In sections like the one shown above, a not-very-convincing attempt has been made to scribe some lines in the cement overlayer, presumably to imply an order or intentionality of some kind. The photo below shows a closeup so you can judge for yourself the success this has in gaining a plausible effect.

Lines that appear random, various tooling effects, cracks and a new breach near the base.

Capstones disappearing under the burden of mortar used to secure them from cracks

The wall's capstones are a mix of rounded limestone and granite boulders, in contrast to a base made of a mix of chunks of similar materials. There's a kind of rude entablature between the two principal components. I'm sure the wall's original look was rustic and unselfconscious, but I can't picture how the mortar placed between the stones was originally finished. If it mimicked the look of the rubble stone buildings around Elora, it may have been somewhat like the detail shown in the next picture. The manner of filling the voids, and the size of the voids left between the pieces, is what decides the look of the finished surface. But it's impossible to discern what it looked like from staring at what's left showing there today.

A regular pattern developed from irregular materials: loose intentionality in design

This long wall serves both as a boundary marker, visibly defining an edge to the landscape, and as a retaining wall, holding back an earthen bank whose height is exaggerated by the road cut beneath it. One wonders whether the wall was inadequately reinforced for the stress of the weight of earth behind it, whether flimsiness of some sort accounted for the extent of cracking that in turn brought on the cement fix? A visit in fall 2014 unexpectedly shed light on this, as sections of the wall were undergoing serious repair and a cross-section revealing the back of the wall was visible. This repair may relate to drainage issues.

Trees too close to the wall can lift and crack components

Breaches in the wall at the point shown above may be due to tree roots expanding and working their way into the base, perhaps aggravated by mortar's permeability and the expansions and contractions of freeze-thaw cycles. Frost heaving in damp soil is quite capable of mechanically breaking up cement, especially in the thin layers filling voids between irregularly shaped rocks.

Strength at the base, but perhaps subject to toppling stresses

The deconstructed portion shown reveals a prism that's substantially thicker at the base, but not leaning back into the slope. Despite the apparent solidity and strength, the forces of moisture penetration and frost heaving may be causing stresses that crack the upper parts of the wall. The landscape fabric just visible in the picture above suggests this isn't the first intervention at this point. From it we can infer that becoming a steward of this old wall is a potentially involving responsibility that might prompt one to resort to cement as a quick and simple fix for recurring problems.

Stark contrast between covered and newly exposed segments

A revealing discovery awaited me on the far side of this opening, where it became clear that someone was bravely engaged in a more restorative form of repair. Sections on either side of the entry steps to a stone cottage had seen their cement tomb carefully chipped away, exposing the original rock composition of the wall to startling effect (see contrast above). Here the mystery of how the wall once looked dissolved before my eyes. Presumably the mender intends to elaborate a new pattern of mortaring, without obscuring the stone facings, and so regain what was likely the original look. Or perhaps they will be left as excavated, as voids emphasizing the pattern of solids comprising the wall? I can't help but wonder if the original pattern didn't involve flush mortar between the many seams. Yet I found my eye quickly acclimatizing to the emphasis the newly recessed joints lend to the stones. Only the person removing the buildup chip by chip can gain an idea of the original treatment, but by the time I left Elora I'd already become comfortable with the aesthetics of the recessed joints, whether original or not. My next visit there will reveal what choice the current owner has made for the restored wall, but I'm comfortable with it as it is here.

Elements of original personality showing in the cleaned sections:a fresh start for a familiar face

The effect of chiseling away the mortar smeared over stone facings is dramatic indeed to my eyes. A great deal of suppressed personality is suddenly visible in the varying colours and shapes of the individual stones. This restoration would be terribly time-consuming and delicate, so as avoid damaging the face of the stone or dislodging pieces that would grow the scope of the repair. But what potential to regain aesthetic effects!

An exposed section reveals a vibrant personality previously entombed in concrete

Colourful granite boulders and a rough entablature add entirely new dimension to the wall

Contrast the variety of form and colour of the revealed look (above) with a still-encased section of the wall (below) that is grey, uniform and lacking in any distinctive character.

Cement-encased section for comparison - no distinct or even any personality for the stone

So while the cement covered wall more resembles the subdued coloration of Elora's limestone cottages, the original look stands in more vibrant contrast with them. Doubly so, because the cottages model consistent blocks of limestone, while the wall promiscuously mixes chunks of limestone and granite in novel patterns.

These developments leave me with a renewed optimism about the future of this old wall. It takes remarkable commitment to tackle work as painstaking as this, but the ability to regain an historic effect - to  unearth the buried past and allow it to live anew in the present - is to me at least real stewardship and tremendously inspiring.

I can't wait to see how it all turns out.

Off the main drag, another high stone wall persisting in Elora

Like the other wall, this one has had a lot of cement placed over the stone original

Connecting with stone

A rough-made stone base links this 1913 wooden bungalow to its rocky upland site

 

When I said ‘yes’ to buying an old house built on a stone foundation, I had no idea of the new headaches I was agreeing to as a result. We tend to see things made of stone as permanent (part of their charm) whereas materials like wood we more easily accept need periodic maintenance. But stone needs attention too, only over much longer intervals if it's been well done originally. And as many do with houses, I went for the whole enchilada without close examination of the parts, then gradually awoke to the realities of the work needed to stabilize and repair.

As I settled into my new home, I began noticing among other things that its sturdy stone base was in fact sporting several breaches. It turns out that seventy-five years of exposure to weather with minimal maintenance will do that to a foundation held together by lime mortar. The materials comprising it were ordinary, mostly from the site itself, and randomly set without conscious patterning or coursing. A lot of different shapes and sizes had gone into that foundation, with a crazy-quilt of seams among them. Here and there enlarging cracks offered openings to the shallow crawl space behind them. Earth shifting, courtesy of forces like tree root expansion or earthquake action, plus the effects of freeze-thaw cycles, can crack and degrade even sturdy walls over time. In some spots the base of the wall was actually coming unstuck and starting to dilapidate.

As roots grow and expand, they raise the soil above them, easily cracking rock walls

This tree trunk has broken the section in front of it, now needing repair and likely to fail again

I also began noticing signs of slapdash fix-ups, careless work that had simply smeared mortar across the face of the stone. These sloppy repairs (what the English call bodges) leapt to the eye like  carbuncles. So of course my first thought as a naieve homeowner was to involve someone skilled (‘call the plumber!’) to address the problem.

But back then I didn’t know anything about stone masonry, so I talked a bricklayer I’d hired to fix some spalling bricks into patching an area on the south wall. I simply assumed the skills needed were one and the same. He was a bit disinclined, a cue I should have taken, but then agreed. Once his patching was done, I completely got the hesitation. In contrast to the neat bands of mortar he placed precisely between the courses of the bricks, his approach to stone involved smearing mortar across the joints. I’m unsure why irregularity should cause that response in a bricklayer, but the results were unfortunate for the look of the foundation. Later, I spent not a few hours chipping away the worst of the smeared cement to make the joints recede and restore something like the original look.

Mortar smeared across the seams obscures the look of the stone wall

A section of rubblestone foundation wall whose base has been rebuilt and repointed

While watching the bricklayer go at this work, I realized how ungainly his attempts to get the mortar into these wandering seams actually were. Using a pointed mason’s trowel for the carry and a smaller one to push mortar into seams just didn’t cut it. A pointed trowel may be a great tool for dressing a brick before placing it, but for infilling irregular seams in a rubble stone wall it clearly wasn’t working. The outcome argued against continuing down this path. The thought dawned that I myself needed to learn how this type of work should be done, so further damage to the look of the building was avoided. I don’t know why I opted to get personally involved rather than just finding a skilled stone mason, yet it was but a small step from there towards working directly with stone. 

Continuing repair: base of a foundation pier needs attention

A stone base under a house creates a distinctive impression, gluing the building firmly to its site in a specific way. If the rock used is taken from the site itself and the building sits on bedrock, the house feels like it's one with the landscape. But let that look become marred by entombing the walls in concrete and the stone is demoted to an indistinct element in a matrix, causing the original aesthetics to recede. Taken far enough, it disappears entirely. You may as well have a full concrete foundation as have rocks masked by mortar. I thought it important not to go any further down that path.

Vertical seams with mortar slathered across them: messy work

So that's when I naievely started on what is now twenty-five years of working with stone and mortar to repair and make things. I wasn't DIY by nature, had no skill at all when I began, but was intrigued by the medium and resolved about the importance of maintaining the heritage asset. And I was a gardener, so had some experience making loose rockery walls for beds, and had an inclination to pile rocks together as a result. I decided to begin by tackling the most visible breach first, upping the ante considerably. It appeared at the centre of a low wall between two tall battered piers supporting the house’s most prominent feature – an elegant entry verandah that one walks by on route to the front door. It appeared that a few weaker chunks of rock had popped apart, causing a crack to appear.  

The scene of my first job: fixing a serious breach in the low wall between the two stone piers

I hadn’t a clue how to go about making a repair, so I began by observing some of the masonry work in progress around the region, which was mostly of the low stone wall type. Around Victoria rock is always breaking through the biosphere, dotting the landscape with  outcrops and large hills not fully covered with vegetation. Bedrock breaking through the landscape defines dramatic contours, and loose rock on the surface seems to prompt a lot of boundary marking with stone walls. And because the material is local and often not much worked before using, the results can feel natural and fit for their surroundings. 

A small knob of glaciated bedrock in a school yard protruding through the organic layer

Rocky outcrops define a landscape that rises and falls, dotted with oak, fir and arbutus groves

Victoria regional character: rocky outcrops, Gary oaks and rustic boundary walls

The operations I observed and the masons I chatted with all used  mortar made from scratch, combining sand, cement and water in mechanical mixers to produce large batches at a time. My first problem was that none of this apparatus would fit in at my site, which offered no place to store and mix sand and cement that would not have been an eyesore and in the way. Nor were industrial quantities of mortar actually needed for the relatively small and picky repair work I’d be attempting. How to access mortar in small quantities was an initial obstacle to getting started.

Bodged work stands out, covers faults, doesn't last

 

Things stalled there for a while, until the puzzle of making mortar solved itself with the discovery that it came premixed in 25-kilo bags – not exactly a blinding insight, but until you know of the possibility, it doesn't exist. I learned about it by chance, in a buddy’s back garden, when he enthusiastically shared his rather exuberant approach to building a low retaining wall. I watched fascinated as he whipped up a small batch of mortar in a plastic pail (‘just add water and stir’), then proceeded to use another one of those pointed trowels to rather awkwardly place it. It was a eureka-moment - here was a way to make mortar that was manageable for repairs.

If sourcing mortar is essential, it’s also necessary to have tools suited to the work of mixing it up and placing it without undue mess. There things remained murky a while longer. To repair an existing wall, you need a way of transferring small quantities of mortar to niches of varying size. This is quite picky work. And moist mortar is prone to sliding on metal, a bit unpredictably. And you need to place it with enough precision, in awkward spaces and odd angles, to avoid marring the face of your stones. Otherwise, you risk the look of entombment, which is pointless and inartistic. 

Successive bodges mar this ill-fated stone wall, which even retrofitted drains aren't saving

Stone retreating behind slathered mortar, a once-artful artifact now imprisoned in concrete

As I began preparing the breach for repair, I anxiously watched the opening enlarge beyond the apparent problem and the scale of the job increase in tandem. I'd improvised a partial solution to the transfer problem by selecting a compact drywall knife in preference to a trowel. Initially I chose it just to mix up the mortar in a pail – its continuing utility evolved naturally from there. A compact blade offers a horizontal platform from which small quantities of mortar can be eased into seams.  I am still using Quebec-made Richard knives to this day, both for repair and for new construction.

Top, pointed mason's trowel, below, Richard knife, a practical tool for repairing joints

Yet another tool was needed in order to transfer the mortar from the knife to the seam and to work it into place. One day, watching a city worker setting stones in a piece of sidewalk art, I noticed he was using a table knife to fill and dress the openings. He allowed that he’d ‘borrowed’ it many years back from his wife, but hadn't ever returned it. He used its narrow blade deftly to work the outside of the seam, so the mortar stayed within the lines and even had a bit of a finished look to it. 

Intrigued, I borrowed an older knife from my own kitchen, a strong but thin steel blade with a bit of ‘give’ to it. The combination of firmness and give allows a surface tension that’s useful in working mortar into crevices. It mimics the design of a mason’s pointing tool, which has a similar spring or tension to it. I soon realized I would need to get mortar into spaces too tight for the width of the knife's blade, so I also acquired several of the pointing tools used by masons (I'm still mystified why the mason I originally hired opted not to use pointing tools to push the mortar into the seams!).

Basic tools: the original kitchen knife (right), drywall knife, and four tuck pointers

While I was still stymied by the challenge of making mortar, I bravely allowed myself to start the job by removing the defective pieces. This phase of repair typically establishes the real scope of a project, as loose material behind the breach comes to light. Here it revealed the presence of a brick pier, obviously meant to support the verandah floor in the vertical plane but now tilting alarmingly due to brick disintegrating where it contacted wet ground. Evidently it was the movement of the pier that had caused the wall to crack and come apart. This new problem caused me some anxiety about proceeding at my skill level, but I decided it was better to know about it and attempt a repair than to neglect it and soon cause a bigger problem. I was also realizing I'd have to replace some rocks that had actually broken apart, and that compatible materials needed to be found.

1989: the leaning brick pier, replacement stone in front of opening, and pointing tools

Getting to the point of mortaring anything took a very long time, but a logic for placement emerged once I located some suitable stone and dry-fitted it as best I could. A skilled stone mason would be able to visualize an outcome without needing to mock it up, but as a beginner I needed to see in advance as best I could. The trick lies in finding material that mates well with what is already in place, so the patch doesn't call attention to itself. Here the challenge was to fill up the opening as much as possible with a single piece while maintaining a vertical alignment consistent with the rest of the wall. And then to place it and seal it as though it had always been there, leaving no blatant traces of repair. It complicated matters that in this location the bedrock dipped somewhat.

There was a lot of loose rock lying about the place, but nothing that felt right for the opening I was dealing with. So I began scouring highway cuts and old excavations looking for local materials, which back then could more readily be found. Finding useable material is part of every job, and compatibility is always an issue when working on an existing structure and striving for seamless repair. Nothing shouts 'bodge' like stark contrasts in materials – unless it’s sloppily applied mortar. My first structure was well-weathered at seventy-five years of age, made of local stone of various colours and textures – the opposite of ‘green’ stone of uniform colour. Mating new and old was a challenge that had to be met with careful selection. 

Above and below: many years on the repair is still holding, doesn't stand out as incongruous

Eventually I found what I thought was a suitable piece for the biggest opening, then assembled a supporting cast of smaller pieces to fill gaps to neighbouring stones as well as other crannies in the wall. It took a painfully long time to complete this small project, a result of proceeding slowly with awkward hands learning to slide mortar carefully into place (a moving target that) and then smooth it to a uniform face. A comparable awkwardness might be the one a boy experiences when first trying to guide a razor over the contours of the face. The kitchen knife however quickly proved invaluable, and in time a rudimentary process for transferring mortar evolved. The trick was keeping it where wanted despite gravity-fueled tendencies to travel where it wasn't. I kept a wet sponge and toothbrush handy for cleaning sloppage from the stones. Vertical seams are bedeviling, even to this day. A special tool for vertical placement is an obvious gap in the repairer's tool bag.

A massive stone pier that also turned out to need repair

When finally completed, this first project gave me a sense of satisfaction far beyond the modest scope of the work. I felt I’d opened a door to the world of stone building and won some knowledge through the execution of the work, despite offending many rules I was then totally unaware of. And while my hands would be busy with restorative projects indefinitely, completing just one prompted me to wonder what it would be like to make something from scratch. That experience lay close to hand: while passing many an hour staring at the repair's slow progress, I'd also noticed that the massive uprights supporting the verandah roof were beginning to come unstuck at the base. While one of these could be repaired as was, my intuitive feeling was that the other needed a foot, or plinth, added to truly secure it. It appeared that there was a brick support at the heart of the stone pier, and that as with the wall, the bricks were spalling where the base sat on moist rock.

Looking back on it, this was a very big leap for a newbie. The implications were potentially large, because I was about to modify an original design that was substantially intact. Indeed, aesthetically and from a distance, it wasn't at all evident that anything needed to be done. But looked at closely and carefully, it was obvious that it did or else risk the integrity of the original down the road. And I knew I wasn't capable of rebuilding that pier to its current standard. So I decided I would proceed by laying out the design for a base completely before placing any stone permanently – and only go ahead when I was satisfied it would be aesthetically compatible. This was a brave step along the problem-finding/problem-solving continuum.
 

The goal was to make the plinth feel like it was always there

This second job led to more searching for appropriate materials that fit the existing composition. It was only a minor amount of new construction, but visually it had to be right and so it too advanced at a glacial pace. As compatibility was imperative, I studied the shape of the existing construction and the way the rocks had been put together for a subtly rustic effect. Eventually, by endless playing around, I got what I thought was a goodish look, meaning one that wouldn't stand out as incongruous or arbitrary. And with my evolving skill in placing mortar, the job moved slowly but steadily forward in execution (new construction is far easier than repair for managing the mortar). When I look back on this small yet prominent project, I’m amazed I tackled it with so little experience. In effect, this repair is what launched me on the path of new building with stone. Looking at it twenty five years on, I take satisfaction from the fact that the eye doesn't notice anything that's amiss, that what was an original artistic ensemble before my hand was on it, remains one after. 

Powder lichen and other elements of weathering help the new base feel like its part of the whole

Down the line there were many such repairs (still are) plus a whole lot of dry stacked garden walls between me and the next bit of new stone construction. But my choice to tackle repair myself had launched me on a path that continues to elaborate itself 25 years on. I haven't become a stone mason by any means and it's probably too late to acquire true journeyman's skills in any systematic way, but my skillset has developed in the ways needed to do the jobs of repair and addition required in my own milieu. And using those skills has become an increasingly expressive act that continues to hold my imagination. More on that in future posts.

Dedication: this piece is affectionately dedicated to my too-early-departed friend Dennis McGann, a hugely talented designer, communicator, and artist who, among many important things, inadvertently turned me on to bagged mortar. Dennis respected and cultivated craft in all his doings and equality in all his dealings with people. He was a fine person, sorely missed.