Bricklaying in Corfe Mullen
Repointing, wall tie repairs, lintels, garden walls and new brickwork across Corfe Mullen and the BH21 villages around it.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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The work
Brickwork in Corfe Mullen: what we do and what it costs you to ignore
Corfe Mullen is a postwar village of cavity walls, so the brickwork faults here are cavity wall faults. Failing pointing on an exposed gable, rusting wall ties, a dropped lintel over a garage opening and garden walls with no damp proof course account for most brickwork failures here, and all four are repairs, not rebuilds, if they are caught early.
Usually the first sign is something you can see. A line of cracking that runs horizontally along the mortar and does not look like normal settlement. Joints on the weather side that have gone back far enough to see daylight in. A garden wall leaning into next door. Or a step crack above a window or a garage door that has widened enough to notice from the pavement.
We come out, look at the whole property rather than the one wall you have spotted, and tell you which of those it actually is, because the repairs are very different and so are the prices. If it is nothing yet, we will say so. The site visit and the itemised written quote cost you nothing either way.
The work
Brickwork jobs around Corfe Mullen
Cavity walls of one generation. Close to two thirds of the houses in Corfe Mullen went up between 1945 and 1982, with the peak in the 1970s and early 1980s, built as a brick outer skin with blockwork behind and a cavity between.
That brickwork was pointed in cement with a thin joint, and it does not fail evenly: it goes on the exposed gable and along the top course under the verge while the sheltered elevations are still fine. We rake back to sound mortar, match the mix and the sand for colour, and put the profile back as bucket handle or weather struck to suit the wall. On the handful of older properties in Corfe Mullen the same job is done in a soft NHL lime instead, because a solid wall has to stay breathable.
Ties and lintels. The pair of skins is only a wall while the ties across the cavity are doing their job. On houses of this age they are galvanised steel, and when they corrode they swell, which lifts the outer skin a fraction at every tie. That is the horizontal cracking at regular course intervals people describe as a stripe up the gable. Remedial ties go in from outside without taking the wall down, and the holes are made good in matched mortar. Garage openings, patio doors and wide picture windows of this period were built off steel lintels, and a corroding lintel expands and cracks the brickwork it carries: prop the opening, cut out the courses, replace the lintel, rebuild over it. Anything structural like that goes through building control.
The wall most likely to need work in the village is still the garden wall. Estate plots are divided by long low brick walls, most built with no damp proof course, so they draw water up and the bottom courses turn soft and blow, and on ground that shrinks and swells a shallow footing does the rest. We rebuild bowed lengths on a proper footing, put in a DPC, reset the coping, and rebuild driveway gate piers bonded into something instead of standing on their own. Where faces have spalled after a frost we cut out and replace, and the awkward part in Corfe Mullen is the match, because the facing bricks used across these estates are largely out of production: that means reclaimed stock, a sample taken off the wall and a trial panel. New work is extension skins, porches, retaining walls between split level plots and new piers, off a dug foundation with weep holes where they belong.
How it runs
Garden walls, garage openings and brick repairs, done properly
Thomas comes out and prices the brickwork himself. Much of Corfe Mullen is brick from the seventies and early eighties, with garden and boundary walls built at the same time, and the likely repairs are a front wall rebuilt, a garage opening repaired, a stack repointed or an extension tied in. The quote itemises access, taking down or raking out, the mix, each wall or elevation, any bricks to be replaced, and disposal.
Most plots have a drive, so bricks and sand sit on your own ground rather than the road. Mortar is mixed on boards, splashes are cleaned off the face as we go, and rubble leaves with us. If a footing turns out shallower than it should be, or a lintel over a garage door has rusted through, we show you a photo and a price before going further.
Corfe Mullen is Dorset Council. Brogg Street and Sleight Lane sit in the parish's only conservation area, where a visible change of brick or mortar should be checked first, and a listed building can need listed building consent; elsewhere, repointing and brick repair are maintenance with no application. New or raised garden walls have height limits, set out in Planning Portal guidance on fences, gates and garden walls, and where the wall is shared with next door, the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 applies.
Cost
Matching the brick and digging the footing: pricing wall work
We do not quote a rate per square metre. A metre of wall says nothing until you know what the joints, the bricks and the footing are like.
Access. A single storey bungalow, a two storey detached house with a chimney on the gable, and a garage wall tight on the boundary are three different set ups. Work above head height needs a tower or scaffold, priced as its own line under the work at height rules.
Matching the brick. Many bricks used in the seventies are no longer made. Finding a match, new or reclaimed, is part of the price, and a patch that stands out is harder to live with than the fault it fixed.
Below ground. Front walls from that era were often a single skin on a shallow footing. On clay that shrinks and swells, a rebuild may need a deeper footing, piers or a movement joint, and that is dug and priced before the bricks go up.
The joints. Rake depth and the state of the brick faces decide the hours on repointing, and a cement-rich mix on a soft brick makes the face spall.
Ask any competing bricklayer how deep the footing is, how the brick will be matched, what the mix is, and whether a coping and a movement joint are included.
If something has moved
A wall leaning out, or bricks dropping from a garage head
Please ring rather than filling in the form. Anything leaning or overhead comes first: a boundary wall pushed over between two plots, brickwork dropping from above a garage opening, or a chimney stack that has moved. Keep children and cars clear.
The first visit is about safety: loose bricks come down, anything that must stay is propped, and the rebuild is priced once the footing or lintel is exposed. Booked brickwork runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. An unanswered call will be returned, and we will be back in touch as soon as we can.
The one local thing
The whole village was built at once, so it is wearing out at once
Roughly two thirds of Corfe Mullen went up between 1945 and 1982, and the single biggest burst of it was in the 1970s and the very early 1980s. That is unusual enough to be worth saying out loud, because it means the cavity walls on a whole street were built within a few years of each other, out of the same bricks, with the same mortar and the same galvanised wall ties.
They do not wear out one house at a time. They come to the end of their life together, and the first sign is usually a neighbour having scaffolding up for something nobody can quite explain.
What to do with that. If a house near you has had remedial ties fitted, it is worth having yours looked at, because yours will be the same age and the same specification. The check itself is quick: a small hole in a mortar joint and a borescope tells you what condition the ties are in without taking anything apart, and it is far cheaper than waiting for the outer skin to bow.
The same logic runs the other way too. If your neighbour has just had a full repoint and yours looks similar, do not assume you need one. Walls on the same street weather at very different rates depending on which way they face and what shelters them, and we will happily tell you that yours has a good ten years left in it rather than sell you a job you do not need yet.
Who you are dealing with
Who builds and repairs your walls, and how to check
Corfe Mullen is about eight and a half miles from our Boscombe base, and we also cover Broadstone and Merley under BCP Council, and Wimborne, Colehill and Lytchett Matravers under Dorset Council. Thomas Hannen, whose firm it is, comes to see the wall and writes the price himself.
You can check Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, on Companies House under 15471719. One verified Checkatrade customer marked us 10 out of 10. Coming out costs nothing, and nor does the written quote, broken down into its parts. Before you book a visit in Corfe Mullen, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Corfe Mullen?
Most repairs in Corfe Mullen 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.
| Question | In Corfe Mullen |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Corfe Mullen. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Brogg Street / Sleight Lane Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Corfe Mullen. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Corfe Mullen. |
Questions
Questions about bricklaying in Corfe Mullen
Is the mortar colour our choice in Corfe Mullen?
Mostly, yes. Corfe Mullen has a small number of listed buildings, and the Brogg Street and Sleight Lane Conservation Area covers a small part of the parish, where a change of mortar colour or joint profile is worth checking with Dorset Council first.
Outside those, nobody at the council has a view on what colour your joints end up. We still match the existing mortar as closely as the sand allows, because a patch reading lighter or darker than the wall around it announces itself from the pavement and is harder to live with than the original fault.
Why is 1970s brickwork failing before Victorian brickwork?
Because it was built quickly and pointed thin. Corfe Mullen is 62.1% post-war stock with its largest cohort in the 1970s and early 1980s, and that generation used a strong sandy mortar struck to a shallow bucket handle. Once the outer skin of the joint carbonates, sand washes out of the top few millimetres and the joint goes hollow. Victorian lime keeps working because it absorbs small movement and closes itself up again.
Do you rebuild the low front walls on these estates?
Yes. The front walls on the Corfe Mullen estates went up with the houses in the 1970s and early 1980s, usually a single skin on a shallow footing under a coping that does not throw water clear, so they take water in at the top and frost pushes the courses apart. Rebuilding from the damp course up with a proper coping and a movement joint stops that cycle. Sound bricks get reused.
How do you decide between patching and doing the whole elevation?
By how deep the failure runs, not by how it looks. Where a rake test finds sound mortar behind a weathered face over most of a wall, patching the hollow bands around the openings and the corners is the sensible job. Where sand runs out dry across whole panels, patching only moves the problem along. On the post-war stock here it is normally the edges rather than the field of the wall.
Does the radon mapping here affect a brick extension?
Only work that makes new floor area. Corfe Mullen falls in a radon affected area in the 3 to 5% band, which calls for basic radon protection in new construction, so an extension or a garage conversion has the membrane detailed into it. Repointing, rebuilding a garden wall or repairing a chimney does not come into it at all, because none of those puts a new floor over the ground.
Nearby, and next door
Bricklaying near Corfe Mullen
Nearby places we also cover for bricklaying, with straight-line distances from Corfe Mullen, and the other trades we offer in Corfe Mullen itself.
Bricklaying nearby
Our other trades in Corfe Mullen
Brickwork and repointing guides
Lime or cement mortar: which do you need? Single storey extension: planning and building regs Subsidence cracks: which ones matterEverything we do in Corfe Mullen Bricklaying, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
Find out what that crack actually is
We will come and look at the whole property, tell you whether it is pointing, ties or ground, and put a written itemised price in front of you.