Lets face it- the majority of the recent “stone walls” gone up around the country are simply tiling jobs. Around houses and particularly on Bypass’ etc. it is a concrete wall with stones tiled on to the outside.
The thing that makes a stone wall look athentic is that the flat stones are generally laid on top of one another – thus the very thin edge is seen as you look dead on. Recent “stone walls” put the largest surface area facing out – this males the wall look entirely unstable. The key test should be – if I built this without mortar would it fall over? Unfortunately, in the majority of cases with new walls, they would!