A wall stands on its foundation, and the foundation is where the work properly begins. On the hill wall, the waller clears the base of the gap down past the turf and the loose soil until the spade hits firm ground, usually hard-packed clay with stones in it, a few inches to a foot down. If the ground is soft, the trench goes deeper. The bottom of it is made roughly level across its width, though it can follow the slope along its length, stepping up the hill where it needs to.
Into this trench go the footings, the biggest stones in the wall. They are often too heavy to lift, and are rolled or levered into place instead, end over end, with a bar. They are laid in two rows, one under each face, with a narrow space between them. Each footing stone is set with its length running into the wall, not along it. This is one of the most important rules in walling, and it applies all the way up: a stone placed with its long side going back into the wall holds far better than one placed lengthways along the face, which can be pushed out by the stones behind it.
Each footing is set so that it sits firm and does not rock. If it rocks, a smaller stone is wedged underneath it, or the ground is scraped away until it beds down properly. The top of each footing should be roughly flat, or tilted very slightly down toward the outside of the wall, so that any water running down the face is carried outward and away from the middle.
The space between the two rows of footings is packed with hearting. This is done by hand, piece by piece, each stone placed so that it fits the gaps and supports the stones on either side. It is not thrown in. Hearting that is shoveled or tipped in leaves hollows, and hollows let stones settle and shift. Hearting placed by hand fills the space, wedges each face stone from behind, and turns the two faces and the core between them into one solid thing.
When the footings are down and the hearting between them is packed, the waller usually stops to look along the line. The footings should run straight, or follow the old curve of the wall smoothly, without kinks. Their outer edges set the width of the wall’s base, and everything above depends on them. On the hill wall the base is about three feet across, and a little more where the ground is soft.
It is quiet work. Behind the doghouse, the sound is mostly the scrape of the spade and the knock of stone on stone, and sometimes the wind in the grass farther up the hill. Now and then the dog comes up, sniffs at the heaps of stone, finds nothing in them worth the trouble, and goes back down to lie in the sun by its door.