The Wales branch of the Dry Stone Walling Association are delighted to learn that Sean Adcock BEM was listed in the New Year Honours List for 2024. The honours “recognise the achievements and service of extraordinary people across the UK” (The Gazette, www.thegazette.co.uk. 2023) . The British Empire Medal was awarded to the Master Craftsman for service to dry stone walling.

Update: 03.01.2024
DSWA Wales contacted Sean and asked if he would like to issue a response and publish a short biography.

Possibly better than the premium bonds

I was dumbfounded… “well” came the question, I managed to splutter something out .. her reply along the lines of “I thought it might be something like that”

The next six weeks were an agony of tight lipped-ness for both of us.  For me there was research… what’s involved, what happens… eager anticipation, not quite believing it, never entirely convinced it wasn’t an elaborate practical joke, even when the well-spoken young man from the cabinet office phoned to check details and explain a few things, don’t think I really believed it until the papers contacted me a day before the announcement.    The fact that enough people could be bothered to nominate me and then the vetting committees agree with them still leaves me a little perplexed.  There are undoubtedly more deserving cases out there in so many walks of life who haven’t had the fortune to be nominated.  It means a lot to be thought worthy of such recognition and thank you to those who considered me worthy of the effort to fill in the forms.   I guess you’re in the readership out there as who else could be bothered, the one thing that seems to be as sacrosanct as not letting on you’ve been honoured before the announcement is official is the secrecy around who nominated you.

So how did I end up here?  If I’m not building walls I’m photographing them, or writing about them, or talking about them.  If we go away on holiday stone is almost invariably involved somewhere.  Brenda loves walking I hate it.  I stand up all day, if I’m not working I want to sit, she says she’s never met someone able to be as still as me.  Emerson said “Its the not the destination, it’s the journey.” I couldn’t disagree more, but fortunately for me Brenda agrees with Mr Emerson and so somehow our relationship endures as I will walk for miles to photograph a stone. 

I suppose it began at Southampton University in the early 80s when I became involved with the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers (BTCV… now The Conservation Volunteers) during my last summer vacation which I filled with walking and conservation work – my last freedom before my final year, hard graft and office life, probably in banking or finance. 

My final year was spent studying hard and going out with Hampshire Conservation Volunteers by way of relaxation.  As a break from revision in the Easter Vacation before finals I visited a friend I had made at the BTCV conservation centre in Llanberis.  By the end of my stay I had decided that on graduating I’d have a gap year working as a volunteer there.  40+ years later its possibly one of the longest gap years on record, too late for a proper job now.

My first introduction to stonework came via stone pitching and mini retaining walls on Snowdon’s PyG track, the rest of the time there was lots of tree-planting, messing around with sand-dunes and fencing   A couple of short-lived jobs in footpath work in Scotland and London’s urban fringe followed.  My main learning experience there was that bosses and underlings are idiots, telling them that wasn’t always appreciated (a lesson I’ve still not learned) and self employment had to be the way to go.   So I returned to North Wales, volunteering again, successfully enduring a job carrying out a detailed survey and writing a report on potential conservation/landscape amelioration sites in Buckley, before eventually setting up as a woodland contractor, with a lot of fencing and a fair amount of footpath work, and very occasionally dry stone walling.

I had become involved with North Wales Branch of DSWA  before I was self-employed, around a year after its inception, mostly through amateur competitions (with a marked lack of success).  Sometime after becoming a master craftsman, I became involved with the committee during the Branch’s most vibrant time including the award of the Branch of the Year when there was no divide between large and small.  It was at this time that I started the first incarnation of “Stonechat” and my eponymous “MasterClass” articles.  In my first year of self-employment, I had been employed by BTCV to produce a report on Volunteers and Footpath work including some technical sections.  The report never made the light of day because it concluded volunteers weren’t always up to the task.  In this instance biting the hand that fed me wasn’t a total disaster as at least it showed I could write.  Not long after I met Liz Agate, who was writing the BTCV fencing handbook, on a course I was instructing on.  We met again when she was revising the sand dune manual.  A little later she was about to rewrite the drystone walling handbook and asked if I had any observations.  I’m not sure she was ready for the avalanche.  I sent a full critique of the then current version with corrections, suggested new content, plus the newly instigated masterclass articles… then just 3 of them.  I ended up with a contract (I say contract it barely covered expenses – ever the volunteer) to travel around UK from the Lizard Peninsula to Thurso interviewing Master Craftsmen, and to re-write the technical sections of the manual, and my walling writing ‘career’ was launched.  I am more than gratified that my version of the book is often referred to as ‘the waller’s bible’ and little could I have guessed where the writing would eventually lead some 15 years later.

In the meantime, I had started to enter professional competitions, inauspiciously at first.  My professional competitive career mirrored my amateur one, no prizes (well I had won a couple in open pairs when a amateur) until a breakthrough came at Sugar Loaf near Brecon during the DSWA’s  1992 grand prix.  Still just an initial certificate holder I was runner up in the professional singles.  Later that summer as a brand new Intermediate certificate holder (there was no advanced back then and it was at a level somewhere between where intermediate and advanced are now) I placed in the Professional Pairs in the English National Championships alongside partner Garth Heinrich, outscoring all other qualified Grand Prix competitors and even the best placed Master Craftsman, ending up fourth in the Grand Prix.  A few weeks later I won my first Professional singles class in Flintshire.

I consider the writing of the bilingual booklet “Clawdd Construction/Codi Cloddiau” as one of my biggest contributions to the craft as so little has been documented about this archetypal Welsh structure.  That it is bilingual makes it doubly important I’d like to think that despite my own more than limited knowledge of the language I have been one of its leading proponents as far as the craft of dry-stone walling is concerned.

“Clawdd Construction/Codi Cloddiau” was written in tandem with “Stonework” – often described as ‘how not to build a wall’ – both of which arose from funding made possible by the North Wales Trunk Road Agency following a report I was commissioned to write following the dualling of the A55 across Anglesey and the associated building of several miles of wall.  This was at a time when I was secretary and then secretary/ chairman of the North Wales Branch, which also saw me writing many general articles for local magazines/press as well as “Stonechat”.

Through my travels around the UK looking at walls I have always been amazed at how little people know about the stonework in their vicinity, either that or they know what’s around but assume that its run of the mill and the same everywhere, not realising that what they have is often close to, if not, unique.  I hope my talking and writing has at least done a little to educate in this area. Whilst writing has been a key aspect of my walling life, my bread and butter is building them.  I have of course worked on many gardens and some large projects, nothing quite as grandiose or artistic as my American jaunts, but mostly it has been farms.  Having eschewed having a workforce I have spent the bulk of the last 20 years working by myself primarily in Nant Ffrancon and the Llanberis Pass where I have completed quite literally, many miles of farm wall, simple boundaries that I like to think I help to flow with the landscape.

In amongst all this I was at one point a trustee of the DSWA of GB.  I have also been a DSWA examiner and sometime competition judge again travelling all over uk – this time from Dorset to Perth, and even further afield (Kentucky) with both.  I am still responsible for the administration of the Association’s Pinnacle Award scheme.   I was also a trainer with ATBLandbase at some point achieving qualifications in coaching and assessment, although cloddiau apart most of my teaching in recent years has been in USA.

Training and grandiose American projects notwithstanding, I am never happier than when alone with the stone on the edge of a field, I just wish it didn’t rain so much around here.   Standing near Idwal at the head of Nant Ffrancon and looking down at the valley floor where nearly every wall you can see is ‘mine’ gives a great sense of achievement.

When building the wall at Opus40 I was asked how much stone I had used in my career (Americans cannot believe how fast we have to work here in the UK).  We sat down and did a quick calculation taking ‘moved’ rather than ‘used’ as most of what I do involves dismantling them first.  We came up with 45000 tonnes, closer to 50k by now. I am fond of saying if a farmer in a field standing in front of a 50k pile of stone had said I’ll pay you for the next 35 or so years to move it all 2 metres that way, I’d have told him what to do with his stone. 

A couple of final thoughts.  50k tonnes, a bad back, wrecked shoulders, achy hip, sore knee, has it been worth it?  I’ve always wanted to leave my mark on the world and achieve something.  As a youngster I had hoped it would be as a cricketer, that ship has long since sailed, disappointingly minor league at best.  Perhaps through another somewhat surprising medium I have made a small imprint.  What’s more I have made friends around the world.  I met the long-suffering Brenda through DSWA.  All things considered I’m damned glad I chose to shift that stone.