Bricklaying and repointing in Downton

Solid walls on The Borough. The Borough and the lanes running off it are largely soft red brick, a fair amount of it handmade, some of it panelled with flint and dressed in brick, and nearly all of it solid walling with no cavity behind it. A quarter of Downton predates 1919 and the largest single slice of that is pre-1900. On that fabric the joints come out by hand with a hacking iron and a plugging chisel rather than an angle grinder, because a disc that wanders takes the arris off the brick and you look at that for the rest of your life. We rake back to about twice the width of the joint, damp the wall down so it does not suck the water out of the mix, and fill in lifts. The mortar is a natural hydraulic lime, usually NHL 3.5 with a sharp sand, kept weaker than the brick so the joint wears before the face does, finished flush or slightly recessed, which is what most walls in the village already have.

Low courses and copings. The ground here is wet and the water table sits high, so the damage turns up in the bottom courses first: spalling where frost has lifted the faces, white salts drying out of the brick, and a soft crumbly band above the damp proof course where there is one at all. Blown bricks are cut out one at a time and replaced with a reclaimed brick of the same size, with a sample panel to look at where the match matters. Outside it is brick and flint boundary walls, gate piers, brick-on-edge copings that have lifted, and free-standing walls pushed over by a root or clipped by something reversing. A coping is not decoration: its weathering throws the rain clear of the top of the wall, and once it is off the water gets into the core and the wall starts to go. Where the movement is real we rebuild from the footing. Where it is old and settled we stitch and repoint it and leave it alone.

Stacks above the older cottages show cracked flaunching, pots sitting loose and joints you can see daylight through, and a stack takes weather from every side at once, so it is normally the first brickwork on a house to go. Repointing is usually enough, and where the top courses have gone soft they come off and go back. Getting on for half the village went up after the war and is a different animal: cavity construction, blockwork inner leaf, facing brick outer skin and mild steel ties. What we see there is horizontal cracking repeating every few courses where the ties have corroded, and cracked lintels over windows and garage openings. The mix is a gauged sand and cement and the joints go back as they were struck. Stepped cracking at a corner, a bowed elevation or a wall that has come away at a return is another thing again: some is helical stitching, some is rebuilding off a sound foundation, and some wants a structural engineer before anybody quotes brickwork. If it is the third we will tell you, because selling you pointing over a moving wall helps nobody.

No rate per square metre: the metre of wall tells you nothing until you know what the joints are like. A cottage front on The Borough, a semi on one of the post-war closes and a boundary wall along a lane are three different access problems. The platform is a priced line rather than a favour, under work at height rules. Depth of rake and the state of the brick faces decide the hours, not the square metres. Comparing quotes, ask the rake depth, hand or disc, the mix, the brick count and the scaffold.

We cover Downton, Redlynch, Lover, Alderholt, Fordingbridge and the SP5 addresses down the Avon valley, with Wiltshire Council for planning and building control. Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which you can look up in a minute. Thomas Hannen's business, and he is the one who comes out to price the job, not a salesman. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written quote are both free.