It depends whether your walls are partly covered with soil. If they are then you'll need to permanently remove all the soil and allow the air to get to it, then plaster with lime on the inside.
If you can't or don't want to remove the soil, then a good tanking system may be necessary, but all you end up doing is raising the moisture content within the wall which could create problems elsewhere, especially if you've got any timber buried in the wall.
If the floor level inside the house is higher than the ground level outside, which it should be if you want a dry house, then removing all the stud work, lime plastering the walls and installing a wood burner would be the route I would take, or do what Mrs. P has and make sure that there's really good ventilation in the cavity. It's not ideal to hide the ground floor interior surface of masonry walls behind stud work, as you really should be able to keep an eye on any damp problems. Mrs. P gets away with it because she lives upstairs. Just make sure you've got enough fuel to get through a winter of snow and cold wind.
Stone walls should be laid and pointed with lime on the outside and don't have concrete blocks or anything built onto them which isn't laid in lime. If it's rendered, it should be done in lime and lime washed and the finish needs to be maintained with lime wash regularly.
The trouble is, is that a lot of builders put cement into lime mortar or lime render so that it will make it set faster. All they end up doing is making a cement mortar with a high lime content. Nice to work with, but not a true lime mortar/render and it will suffer from all the issues a sand and cement mortar has when used on a lime built building.
You also need to ensure that the roof is weather tight, has a good eves projection, is flashed properly and the guttering is working to keep the walls as dry as possible
As for insulation, fill the loft with 300mm of it and it'll be warm enough with the burner going, you'll need a draught and fresh air is your buildings friend. Forget about the 21st century way of building houses and enjoy living in an old house, that's why you bought it after all. <Smiley>
Slab paths, drives and any form of concrete apron which abut the walls of an old building are a no-no, as they keep the soil damp and splash water up the walls when it rains.