100 Year Old Wall

I haven't been in a very bloggy mood the past few days, so it's a good thing I wrote some buffer posts or you wouldn't have seen me. :) Here's another project we're working on in our yard. While mowing the lawn by the street, the mower would often hit the edge of a rock, every time. It was annoying and damaging, but the rock, when dug around, seemed to go down very far, so we left it alone for awhile. Later, we came back armed with shovels and dug down about 4 inches around this little point that came up and kept coming to more and more rocks. In the end, we discovered a rock and mortar wall that extended down into the ground about 3 feet and kept going to the left and the right. We've dug a trench (removing the rocks as we go) about 7 feet long and have so far not met the end of the wall. We've been removing the rocks and lining our rose garden with them (Roses pictured in a previous post).

Pretty blurry picture, but you can sort of see the rocks making up the wall (Keeps going into the dirt)

The trench from above. It doesn't look very deep, but it is.

And it extends in this direction, too



Now, our neighbor's father owned the land before 2 sets of owners before us. This wall seemed rather old, since it must have taken a long time for the ground to erode enough to cover it completely. We asked our neighbor (Who is about 86) if he remembered there ever being a wall here (He's also lived nearby his entire life) and he said no, he can't ever remember a wall being there, it had always been a cotton field before our house was built.  

So the wall is at least 80 years old and probably much older, since the ground had eroded enough to cover it.  We're guessing at least 100 years, maybe more.

Pretty cool, huh?

   We're still digging it up. ;)