Bricklaying 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 good part of Downton predates 1919, much of it before 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. Much of 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. The usual sign 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.

Measuring a wall in square metres tells you very little until the joints and the bricks have been looked at.

Soft brick or hard. A Downton cottage front on The Borough in soft brick and lime has to be raked out by hand. A post-war semi with hard cement joints can be cut out with a disc, carefully. How deep each joint goes back is what sets the hours.

Blown faces. Where frost, or an old cement repoint, has taken the face off bricks, they are cut out and a matching brick goes in. Finding one the right size and colour may mean a trip to a reclamation yard.

Setting up. A street terrace front, a semi's gable and a garden wall along a lane each need their own staging, and the work at height rules make it a separate item.

Mortar. Lime for older brick, a matched cement mix for newer work, and on a chimney stack the flashings reset as well. A rebuilt run of garden wall also needs a proper coping so it does not soak through again.

Before you choose, ask each firm how deep they will rake and whether by hand or disc, which mix they will use, how many replacement bricks are allowed, and whether scaffolding is included.

We cover Downton, Redlynch and Lover, Alderholt and Fordingbridge, and the SP5 addresses along the Avon valley. Our base in Boscombe is 18.4 miles off. Planning and building control are with Wiltshire Council. You would be dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, company number 15471719, registered in England and Wales. Before you book a visit in Downton, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Thomas Hannen owns the company and comes to see the wall and price it himself. There is a 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade from a verified customer. Coming out to look is free, and the written quote, with every item set out, costs nothing either.

Most repairs in Downton 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.