Bricklaying in Blandford Forum

An old town front has fine joints. Nearly a fifth of Blandford is pre-1919, and the joints on that brickwork are fine, sometimes barely wider than a pencil line, with lime and a local sand behind them.

There is no way to rake that out with a disc without cutting the arrises off the bricks either side and leaving a wall of wide grey lines that can never be undone. It comes out by hand with a chisel and goes back in a lime mix, usually an NHL, matched to the old mortar for colour, sand and strength, finished to the profile the wall already carries rather than a modern weather struck edge. Fine joints are slow. A front elevation on one of these houses is a fortnight of work.

Where a terrace finishes in a parapet, the wall takes weather on both faces and from above, so it is always the wettest brickwork on the building. A cracked coping, a missing damp proof course under it or a blocked outlet behind it will soak the brick until it freezes, and the faces then start spalling in the room below the roof rather than up at the top. We rebuild the top courses, bed a coping that actually sheds water, and put the damp proof course back where it should have been. Older openings here are spanned by brick arches, and when one drops the crack over the window is only the sign. The arch has to be supported, cut out and set back with the bricks in their original order, and if the timber or lintel behind it has gone that comes out too.

Stacks, and the neighbour they sit on. Three in ten houses in Blandford Forum are terraced, so a stack here is tall, exposed and often sat on the party wall between two houses, which means the joints and the flaunching go early and the repair involves your neighbour whether you like it or not. The Party Wall etc. Act 1996 sets out how that is handled, and the scaffold usually has to come off the pavement or through somebody's yard, which is worth sorting out before the work is booked rather than on the morning. Once a face has come off a brick, the one behind it takes water like a sponge and the next frost takes the one above, so damaged bricks are cut out one at a time and replaced, turning a sound brick where the back of it is still good and sourcing reclaimed brick of the right size and colour where it is not.

There is a lot of old boundary wall in Blandford Forum, most of it half a brick thick with piers, standing on a footing nobody would build today, and roots, vehicles and water sitting on a lost coping are what finish them. We take down and rebuild the section that has moved, keep the old brick where it is sound, and put back a coping and gate pier that will not be doing this again in five years. Round the edge of the town it is the 1970s and 1980s housing: extensions, garage conversions, porches and opening a wall up. That is ordinary cavity work off a footing dug to a proper foundation depth, with building control inspecting it as the job goes.

Brickwork is priced on the joints, the bricks and the access, not on area. Access. A town-centre terrace where the scaffold stands on the pavement, a cottage up a passage where every barrow goes in by hand, and an estate semi with a drive beside it each change the price before any work starts. A scaffold on a chimney or gable is priced separately under the work at height rules.

Joint depth and method. Raking out by hand on soft brick is slow. A disc is faster on hard modern brick but ruins an old one. How deep the joints go back sets the hours.

Matching. Old Georgian brick is hard to match, and reclaimed bricks cost more and take time to find. Lime mortar matched in colour and texture takes more labour than a cement mix.

Old cement repairs. Where an earlier repair smeared cement over lime pointing, the faces behind may be spalling, and removing it without more damage is careful work.

Ask any other quote how deep the joints are raked and whether by hand or disc, what mix is used and whether it has been matched, and whether the scaffold and any pavement licence are included.

Most people assume a conservation area tells them what they can repair. It does not, really. Repointing and repairing an unlisted house inside the area needs no application at all, and you do not have to wait for anybody. What is controlled is demolition.

Knocking down a boundary wall over a metre high where it fronts a road, or over two metres elsewhere, counts as demolition in a conservation area and needs permission first, even where you fully intend to rebuild it exactly as it was. The Planning Portal sets out those heights, and the order matters: the consent comes before the wall comes down, not after somebody has already started clearing the rubble.

The practical version, for a town with as much old fabric as Blandford Forum, is to spend ten minutes finding out what your address actually is before you collect prices. There are three possibilities: unlisted and outside the area, unlisted but inside it, or listed, and each one changes the mix, the method and the timetable.

If you are listed, allow a couple of months for a determination and expect a conservation officer to ask about the sand, the mix and the joint profile, which is a question a sample panel answers better than a paragraph. We will build the panel and write the specification in the quote so it can go straight in with the application.

Brickwork in Blandford Forum is 16.8 miles from our Boscombe base, and we take it on in the town, Blandford St Mary, Bryanston, Stourpaine, Charlton Marshall and further across DT11. Planning, listed building consent and building control all sit with Dorset Council.

The firm is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. The owner is Thomas Hannen, and he looks at your wall and writes the price himself, so there is no salesman in between. On Checkatrade, one verified customer has scored us 10 out of 10. The visit costs nothing and neither does the quote, which is itemised line by line. Before you book a visit in Blandford Forum, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Blandford Forum need no application at all. What decides whether a change to the outside of your house does is who the council is, whether a conservation area or a listing applies, and whether the place sits in a protected landscape.