Morrison Point Dry Stone Wall Project

2023 Season

167 Morrison Point Rd. - east of the schoolhouse.

We continued the work to the east of the schoolhouse with 10 - 15m more wall being created this year.

355 Morrison Point Rd. - sheep pasture wall

We have rebuilt the 25m wall in front of the sheep barn. The original wall that was built circa 1870 had collapsed. We moved the wall to the north by about 1.5m and put curves in it to allow several well-established trees to continue to live.

370 Morrison Point Rd. the lane way gate

We had some fun with innovative elements in this rebuild project, including the integration of large erratic, and the construction of a smoot.

Dry Stone Wallers Rock.

About the Project

The Morrison Point Dry Stone Wall Project is a neighbourhood-based, non-profit volunteer initiative based in South Marysburgh Township, Prince Edward County (PEC), Ontario, Canada, part of the GMA (Greater Milford Area). The project was initiated in 2017, with the first restoration project launched in April, 2018.

Project Background:

The stone walls of Morrison Point Road are beautiful, extensive, unique and historic, yet many were in disrepair or had been removed. A number of landowners on the road expressed interest in volunteering time and resources to the preservation project. One challenge is that the walls abut private property and could improve the value of these properties. Therefore, there is potential for individual gain through the efforts of the community. As a result, the intent of this document is to provide guidance so that all decisions and actions are transparent, fair and agreed upon by the community at large.

Project Objectives:

Restore, replace and potentially expand the dry stone walls (DSW) of Morrison Point Road and surrounding areas.
Develop a base of skilled volunteers willing to help with the tasks of maintaining and improving the DSWs
Document the history of the DSWs of Morrison Point Road and their current state
Document and share the activities of restoration and expansion.
Celebrate the DSWs and the community spirit of Morrison Point through a variety of events.

Project Team:

Les Stanfield (538 Morrison Point Rd.), Alan Weekes (553) and Greg Forbes (620) have volunteered to help coordinate the efforts of the project. Other project team members are being sought and the organizational structure will evolve as we determine the level of interest.

Decision Making Process:

Each category of opportunity will require different actions by the volunteers and land owners. To ensure fairness, a steering committee will be established that will evaluate the following to select priority work projects for any given year.:

the benefits to the community, the road and the land owner,
the availability of resources (money and rock),
and the needs of volunteers

Land owners on the steering committee must recuse themselves from discussions and decisions about potential work carried out by the Project Team on their own property.

Conclusions:

It is hoped that in the early years we will train enough qualified people that future work days can both train new volunteers and expand the rate of work that is done. As our knowledge and skill grows, it is also hoped that several types of projects could occur simultaneously utilizing any number of approaches. For example, community resources might be expended on an expansion of walls to public lands; or individual land owners may decide to purchase materials to build a new wall and take advantage of neighbours’ and friends’ kindness. Others may simply wish to pay to have a wall built.

Anything is possible, but as a non-profit, community-based initiative, we hope to collectively contribute to the preservation and improvement of the beauty and historical value of our unique area.

Morrison Point Road

Morrison Point Road in Prince Edward County, Ontario has a unique charm and character thanks to its special location and history.

The soil of Morrison Point Road is notoriously shallow. The geology is Paleozoic Middle Ordovician, where the bedrock is exposed with typically less than 1 meter of drift cover. The 1878 Beldon historic atlas states “... geologically, its composition is in a high degree calcareous, the limestone coming to the surface with such prominence as to render the soil in many places incapable of sustaining vegetable growth through the seasons of continual drought.”

From: Hastings and Prince Edwards Counties 1878, South Marysburgh Township, Wellington Village, Milford, publ. H. Belden and Co., 1878

Dry stone wall construction has been going on for thousands of years, since the Neolithic period, and in the United Kingdom since c3200 BC. The stability of the underlying Morrison Point Road limestone makes the stone wall foundations very stable, and the shallow soil cover provides ready access to a good supply of field stone. While dry stone construction around the world is sometimes based on quarried stone, the Morrison Point Road walls are all built from locally collected stones from the immediate fields along the road. They are double skinned walls, where there are literally two walls gently leaning towards each other, with the gap packed tightly with hearting (stone rubble) to make the outer faces very stable.

553 MoPoRo

More to come ...