wall

We live on Brickyard Road in Woodstock, which is one of the older roads in town. The oldest house on
the road and one of the few from the 18th century is the Lyon farmhouse, built by wealthy Woodstock
business man Ebenezer Lyon around 1740. He owned grist mills and also opened the first brickyard in
town, so this was the road from his house to the brickyard, hence the name. For many years it was
The Lyons Tavern, a popular watering hole and proof that our sleepy road was once a busy
thoroughfare linking agricultural Woodstock with the manufacturing towns of Southbridge and
Sturbridge Mass. The tavern offered rooms as well, and many guests complained of thumps, bangs,
and ghostly footsteps. The house thus became known as one of Connecticut's earliest haunted houses.
Like most of the town, we have an abundance of stone on our property, and the length of our road
frontage is lined with a tumbledown stone wall that I guess dates from the 18th century when intrepid
settlers tried to make a go farming the land here. Centuries of neglect and gravity have brought the
wall to ruin, so I have been slowly rebuilding it, using the stone that is still piled there or buried just
beneath the leaves. I have finished about 150 linear feet of the 600 feet or so that comprises the entire
wall. I'm amazed just how much stone there is under the debris. The nice thing about the old wall
stone is that it has weathered edges so when reconstituted, the wall has a "been there forever" look. I
try to put the best lichen-encrusted stones facing outward and on top, so they can seed the other
stones (in my experience, it takes five years before noticeable lichens start to appear on freshly built
walls made with excavated rock).

(Note - since writing this we have moved to Maine, but I left it up as it brings back fond memories
for me and because I hope it may be useful for others. SInce writing this I learned that Northeastern
Connecticut was the epicenter for stone wall construction in New England during the first half of the
19th century. I am guessing on the date of this particular wall by the artifacts I found under it but it
could actually be closer to 200 yearsd old.)

I excavated the stones and used them to
build the section of the wall just behind.
Here just a few nicely lichen and
moss-covered rocks are evident in the
foreground and these will be placed atop
the finished section in the background.
There is quite a bit more stone under the
leaves and soil and this I will use to
construct the lower part of the next bit. I
am no stone mason, but I actually like the
sort of irregular, not-too-level look of the
rough wall better than one laid out with
line levels - at least here. There are
enough small stones left under the old
wall to act as a footing for the rebuilt
sections.

In addition to a few cases of empty beer
bottles and unrecognizable, rusty metal, I
did manage to find several beautiful
mid-19th century bottles under the
tumbled stone. Most likely they were
tossed from a carriage by a civil war era
litter bug. The Dr Cumming Vegetine was
a popular patent medicine sold in the latter
half of the 19th century. It was touted as a
blood purifier useful for relief from ulcers,