A historic garden feature by legendary 18th century landscape designer Capability Brown is being restored by a talented young dry stone waller from North Wales.
Barney Murray, from Llandyrnog, in Denbighshire, whose impressive CV includes King Charles’s country residence at Highgrove, has begun work on a ha-ha, a sunken stone wall at Wynnstay Hall, the historic home of the Williams-Wynn family near Ruabon.
Barney, 26, said: “Restoring a Capability Brown ha-ha is probably a once in a lifetime job – it’s been here for over 200 years and hopefully I’m going to make sure it’s here for another 200 years.
“The ha-ha was built to prevent animals like deer and sheep getting into the shrubbery and eating everything and it extends around it for several hundred yards, all in stone, with no mortar.
“I’m not rebuilding it the way I would build it – I’m doing it the way those 18th century stonemasons would have done it.”
It’s been a whirlwind 18 months for Barney who is fresh from building a dry stone wall on an island in the Outer Hebrides
He has become the first Welsh dry stone waller to be awarded Master Craftsman status in 30 years while an art installation, named Cerrigoerion (Cold Stones in Welsh), made for the prestigious New Brewery Arts Centre in Cirencester from a demolished Vale of Clwyd farmhouse, was also displayed at the National Eisteddfod in Wrexham.
There it was submitted in the Lle Celf section where it won the People’s Choice, award chosen by the public and Barney said: “I am a Welsh-speaker and I’m a regular visitor to the Eisteddfod so it was special for me to be recognised there.”
In November last year he was the first winner of the Young Building Craftsperson of the Year Award, supported by English Heritage and including a £1,000 prize which was presented to him at a special ceremony at Eltham Palace, in London.
Earlier this year Barney was working in the Cotswolds when a friend needed some help restoring a spectacular fountain in the grounds of Highgrove – that involved Barney being vetted by security services before he could lend a hand.
And the awards kept coming with Barney crowned Dry Stone Wall Grand Prix winner this summer after a series of six events held in Scotland, Cumbria, Lancashire, Yorkshire and the Swansea Valley.
He said: “Dry stone walling goes back centuries and there are lots of dry stone walling competitions and I managed to win the British Grand Prix this year including the event at Gwrhyd Quarry in the Swansea Valley.
“That makes me British Champion and Welsh champion while I suppose I am a World Champion after winning the only international dry stonewalling event at Trentino in the Dolomite Mountains in Italy, in 2022, because there aren’t any other international competitions.
“It’s just such an amazing thing to do. I went to school in the Vale of Clwyd but I wasn’t very academic but in the Sixth Form at Denbigh High School I had an amazing art teacher, Simon Sherrington, and he inspired me.
“I had always loved art and I knew I wanted to do something that involved working with my hands.
“I did enrol on an Arts Foundation course in Wrexham but then I met two dry stone wallers, Sion Alun Rogers and Xander Robertson, and just went off to work with them and never went back to college.
“It’s not a stressful job. There’s never anything to worry about other than if there’s enough stone.
“Coming to work is just pure joy. There are no downsides to working and so I don’t struggle to sleep at night.
“There’s a gang of us across the country and I can bring others in to help but on this job at the Wynnstay Estate I can manage on my own and with it being Grade Two-listed the Conservation Officer is happy with my work.
“It’s probably a once in a lifetime opportunity to restore a Capability Brown Ha-Ha so I’m going to make the most of it.
“I’ve made a good start and if the weather is good I think I can do it in a couple of months and I’ve got plenty of work looking ahead so I’m happy.
“What I do is a craft as old as man using a material that’s older than time.
“They talk about the oldest profession but people have been piling stones one on top of another since the beginning of time and that’s what I do and I give a 100-year guarantee on everything I build.”
