His walls are works of art, but it is Tom Trouton’s innovative trees, fruits and even newts that set him apart as a master of dry stone, says Annie Gatti
FROM a distance, the nearly completed walled enclosure, where two figures are companionably chipping away at one of the walls, could be mistaken for a sheepfold. In fact, this is a workshop space in the middle of a field at the Somerset estate of The Newt, where drystone wallers Tom Trouton and his stepson, Liam Brady, are ‘planting’ a stone tree into the waist-high wall. There is no technical plan, no metal framework—only three piles of stones, a bucket of hammers and Mr Trouton’s skill.
The leaning trunk in beige Hadspen limestone, which looks brown set against the grey tones of the wall, is already in place and now Mr Trouton selects a chunky piece of Shaftesbury greenstone, rounds off the edges with a few sharp knocks of the hammer and fits it onto the wall, where it becomes the first leaf. ‘I’ve been used to seeing windswept trees on Exmoor, where I grew up, and I think this gives the tree more depth,’ he explains.
As the tree grows, stone upon stone, the waller reveals this is his second time creating one. The first was for the owners of a contemporary house in Dorset, who wanted a curved dry-stone wall with a recess for a bench and some trees. On his first site visit, Mr Trouton asked where the trees were to be planted and they replied that they wanted two trees in the wall itself, to create interest all year round.
‘Momentarily, I thought, “Well that’s not going to work very well”—and then it clicked. “Aah, you want stone trees…”’ Undaunted, he immediately decided the trees should look authentic and started planning their design in his head. ‘I think I’m very lucky—I’ve always been able to visualise things,’ he reflects.
The tree in the wall at The Newt is there to show those who attend Mr Trouton’s workshops the range of applications that dry-stone work offers. When he and his team (he employs six wallers, including his son, Joseph, all of whom he has trained) finish the enclosure, it will showcase retaining walls, a firepit, a wildlife pond, stiles, an ornamental pear, a moongate and a hedgehog-sized lunky (a hole at the base of the wall, traditionally made for sheep or lambs to pass through).
Mr Trouton’s relationship with stones and walls started on his parents’ farm on Exmoor, where he spent many hours watching a traditional waller at work, making and repairing stone banks, a style of wall seen across the South-West (see box). Aged 10, he made his first dry-stone wall from shillet (a form of slate), when, keen to make a den on the far side of a steep slope, he cut a pathway through the turf with a pickaxe and shored it up
