Terada Family Residence Stone Wall

What the Terada Family Residence Stone Wall is

The Terada Family Residence Stone Wall (寺田家住宅石垣塀, Terada-ke Jutaku Ishigakibei) is a masonry boundary wall of 1936 in Shinmachi, Kaizuka City, Osaka Prefecture, listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 25 July 2011. It runs 56 metres in total length and stands 3.4 metres high at its tallest.

It follows the western edge of the plot, turning at right angles north and south of the main gate. Facing Prefectural Route 204, the Terada Family Residence Stone Wall is the first part of the estate anyone on the street meets. A service door with a semicircular arch opens towards its northern end.

The body is granite laid in Nunozumi coursing with a capping stone bedded along the top. The faces are rusticated, left rough in the middle and dressed flat only at the margins, so the wall reads quite differently in morning and evening light.

Why the Terada Family Residence Stone Wall was registered

The criterion cited is contribution to the historic landscape. The national database describes a stone wall that gives the street its weight and character.

Of the seven structures on the estate, only the main gate and this wall are visible from outside. However carefully the house and the storehouses are made, it is the Terada Family Residence Stone Wall that gives the estate its public face, and 56 metres of it sets the character of the street. What was recognised is its work as a boundary between road and household rather than any merit as an object.

Its registration number is 27-0548, last of the seven. Including the wall in a single combined registration brought the surface that divides inside from outside within the protection of the system.

What to look at

Start with the coursing. Nunozumi lays stones so that the horizontal joints run continuous, the most orderly of the traditional Ishigaki bonds. Without the irregularity of random coursing, the rustication of each face stands out all the more.

Look next at the capping. A separate course of stone bedded along the top keeps rainwater out of the body of the wall and draws a level line across the whole length. That single row does a great deal for how the wall reads.

Do not miss the service door towards the north. Its semicircular arch is the one curve in an otherwise rectilinear composition, and it is where the design of the Terada Family Residence Stone Wall comes closest to display.

Sources describe the stonework a little differently. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database records rusticated granite in coursed bond, while Kaizuka City writes of dressed stone. Dressed blocks laid in courses and then rusticated on the face satisfies both accounts.

Seeing the Terada Family Residence Stone Wall

The Terada Family Residence Stone Wall is the boundary of the estate itself, and its full length can be followed from the pavement of Prefectural Route 204. Of the seven structures it offers the most to look at. The grounds behind it are closed.

Walk it from in front of the main gate northwards, following the right-angled turns. At each corner two faces come into view at once, which makes the regularity of the coursing easy to read. The arched service door lies towards the far end, so the walk is worth finishing.

Light changes the stone. Morning sun from the east flattens the faces, while afternoon light deepens the shadows in the rustication. Photograph from the pavement and take care not to step into the carriageway. Directions and the conditions for visiting the estate as a whole are set out on the page for the Terada Family Residence in Kaizuka.