Back to Home Page Back to Traditional Masonry Page Traditional Masonry - Small Stones. There is a visible pattern on the face of old rubble stone walls that reflects a way of working stretching back over the millennia and across countries and even continents. I have seen it on my travels across Europe in simple boundary walls, farm buildings, monastery, castle and gothic cathedral alike.
Small stones occur in mortar joints in rubble stonework for two reasons.
The first reason is to make up the difference in height between one stone and its neighbouring stone so that another stone may be placed over the top of both of them, in balance, without it rocking or moving about. This is common sense and is a natural occurrence that anybody would discover if they worked at rubble stone for even a short period of time. Small stones used for this purpose are still to be seen in new work. The second reason small stones occur in mortar joints is quite different and is the one which most concerns us here. We can begin to explain this by looking at a different craft altogether namely plastering.