Bricklaying in Langton Matravers
Stone and brick walls a mile and a half up from the sea, pointed in a mix that suits the wall and the weather it takes. Free site visit, written price, no pressure.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Last updated
Nearly every failing wall in Langton Matravers has the same story: it was pointed in cement at some stage, and the cement is now holding damp and salt inside the stone instead of letting it out. Raking that back and repointing in lime is the repair.
In Langton Matravers the seaward face, the stone lane walls and the stacks are where trouble starts. The seaward side of the house has gone soft, with joints washing out and green growth sitting on it all winter. A stone boundary wall along one of the lanes has started to belly out or drop its coping. Or a chimney stack has begun shedding mortar and nobody wants to think about what is holding the pots in.
None of those need a builder to sell you a rebuild. They need somebody to get close enough to see which joints have failed and how deep the damage runs, which is what the first visit is for. We look at the whole elevation, photograph it, and give you an itemised written price with the mortar mix written on it.
The work
What Langton Matravers walls tend to need
Stone and brick walls in lime. The older walls in the village are Purbeck limestone rubble, laid up with wide irregular joints, often with brick dressings round the openings and a brick stack on top. We rake those joints out by hand.
A disc cutter is quicker and it is wrong here: it widens a joint that was never straight and scars the stone either side, and you cannot put either back. Pointing goes back in an NHL lime with a sharp sand matched for colour, finished just back from the face and brushed, never as a proud weather struck band that would shed water straight onto the stone below it.
The seaward elevation. At 2.6km from open water the specification changes. Salt travels in on the wind, sits in the outer few millimetres of a wall and keeps the surface damp between showers, so the south and west faces, which are the exposed ones here, stay wet far longer than the sheltered sides. That is what powders a lime joint early and lifts the face off a soft brick. We point the exposed elevations in a slightly more open mix so they can dry, and we tell you honestly that side will come round again sooner than the rest of the house. Anything metal built into the wall suffers the same way, so old cramps and wall ties get checked while the scaffold is up.
The lanes in Langton Matravers are lined with stone walls and they nearly all fail from the top down. Once the coping is loose, water gets into the core, frost does the rest and the wall bows. We take a bowed length down to sound work, reuse the original stone, rebuild off the existing footing and rebed the coping so it throws water clear. Gate piers that have twisted usually need taking down and setting back up plumb. A new wall is a different question, and Planning Portal guidance on garden walls sets out the height you can build to before planning permission is involved.
Brick stacks on stone houses take everything: re-flaunching, repointing, cutting out bricks whose faces have gone and replacing them with reclaimed stock of the right size. Where a stack has movement we rebuild from the last sound course. Extensions, garages and rebuilt returns go up in cavity construction: blockwork inner leaf, outer leaf in stretcher bond, wall ties at proper centres, a damp proof course above ground level and a lintel sized for the opening. Where new work meets an old wall on the line with next door, the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 applies and it is easier dealt with early than argued about later.
How it runs
Stone walls on the lane: taking down, rebuilding and pointing
Thomas looks at the wall in person: a stone boundary wall on the lane, a retaining wall holding back a bank, a gable or a chimney stack. He checks what it was built with before anyone picks up a hammer, because Purbeck rubble laid in lime needs lime back. His written quote itemises access, raking out, the mortar, the face area, any stone or brick to replace, and taking the rubble away.
Taking down, rebuilding and pointing come under one company and one quote. A wall on the road is worked behind barriers so people can get past, and a chimney or high gable goes on scaffold. Stones taken down are laid out in order so they go back where they came from, and lime is protected from frost and drying wind while it cures. Rubble leaves each day. If a wall proves hollow or loose behind its face, it is photographed and priced, and you choose whether we carry on.
Pointing an unlisted wall back the way it was is repair and needs nothing. On a listed building listed building consent from Dorset Council comes first, and before altering how a wall looks, find out from the council whether a conservation area covers it. If you are altering rather than repairing, other permissions you may require is worth a read.
Cost
What a wall is holding back changes the price
Walls are not priced by the square metre. What the wall is made of, what it is holding back and how far gone the joints are decide it.
Stone, not brick. Purbeck rubble has wide, uneven joints that are raked and pointed by hand, and that is slower than brickwork. Matching stone for a rebuild has to be sourced.
Retaining or freestanding. A wall holding back a bank is under load all the time, and clay that shrinks and swells pushes hardest when it is wet. That can mean drainage behind the wall, weep holes, or a rebuild rather than a repoint.
How far it has gone. Light weathering is a rake and repoint. A bulge or a loose core means taking down and rebuilding. Spalled brick on a stack means cutting out and replacing.
Height. Low garden walls need no platform, while a stack needs a scaffold, priced under the work at height rules.
Ask anyone else how deep the joints are raked and whether by hand, what mortar goes in, whether drainage behind a retaining wall is included, and whether scaffold and waste are in the price.
If something has moved
A retaining wall bulging after rain or stone falling
Phone us, rather than using the form, if a wall is leaning, stone is coming off, or a chimney has moved. A lot of walls in Langton Matravers stand right on the lane or hold a bank back, so tell us if one is over a footpath or a parking space.
The first visit makes it safe: loose stone taken down, the area barriered off, or props put against the wall until it is rebuilt. After heavy rain the clay behind a retaining wall pushes hardest, so keep people away from its foot. Scheduled work is Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. Missed calls get a ring back from us at the first opportunity.
Worth knowing
What the salt air does to a wall here, and what to do about it
Sitting a mile and a half up from the coast changes a wall in ways you cannot see from the pavement. Salt carried in on the wind is hygroscopic: it pulls moisture out of the air and holds it, so a wall that would dry out between showers inland stays damp for days.
When it does finally dry, salt also crystallises just under the surface and pushes the face of the material off from behind.
That is why spalling here so often shows on the south and west elevations and hardly at all on the sheltered side of the same house, and it is why a wall that has been sealed or pointed in hard cement gets worse rather than better. Sealing traps the salt in. The wall needs to be able to breathe it out.
What that means in practice, if you are getting quotes. Ask what mix is going on the exposed elevation and expect it to be different from the sheltered one, because a single specification for the whole house is a sign nobody has walked round it. Ask about the metalwork: ties, cramps, old fixings and lintel bearings corrode faster this close to the sea, and the rust expands and cracks the brick around them.
And keep an eye on ground levels, because a raised patio or a bed piled up over the damp proof course will pull salt and water into the wall from below, which no amount of pointing will fix. We will point out anything of that sort at the site visit whether it is our work or not.
Who you are dealing with
Stone and brick work across BH19 and the rest of Purbeck
From our base in Boscombe to Langton Matravers is 11.2 miles. We take on walls and brickwork in the village and in Worth Matravers, Kingston, Acton, Swanage and Corfe Castle, across BH19 and the rest of Purbeck, in the Dorset Council area.
Our firm, Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, has company number 15471719 and is registered in England and Wales. Thomas Hannen is the owner, and he comes to see the wall before any figure is written. Checkatrade carries a verified customer's 10 out of 10 for us. The site visit is free, and the quote comes in writing, itemised, also free. Before you book a visit in Langton Matravers, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Langton Matravers?
Most repairs in Langton Matravers 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 Langton Matravers |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Langton Matravers. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Langton Matravers Conservation Area 1, Conservation Area 2 and Acton Conservation Area 1 and 2. They cover parts of Langton Matravers, so check whether your street is inside one. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Langton Matravers. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | Inside the Dorset National Landscape (formerly AONB), so anything visible from outside gets more attention. |
Questions
Questions about bricklaying in Langton Matravers
Our wall is stone, not brick. Do you point those?
We do, and to a different rule from brick. On stone the mortar is kept back from the face instead of running over it, so the stones read as stone and water sheds off them instead of sitting on a ledge of mortar and soaking in. Inside Langton Matravers Conservation Area 1 that joint finish is part of what is controlled, so we copy the profile already on the wall instead of choosing one that suits us.
We are 2.6km from the coast. Is salt an issue inland?
It carries this far. At 2.6km the wind still puts salt onto the south west face, which is the exposed elevation at Langton Matravers, and it keeps the joint damp so the mortar never fully dries between one shower and the next. Anything metal in that wall corrodes from the outside in at the same time. In practice the seaward face wants attention while the sheltered ones are sound, so we price it on its own.
There are 50 listed entries here. What does that mean for us?
It means the odds of your house or its boundary wall being listed are higher than in most villages. Langton Matravers has 50 listed entries as well as its own conservation area, so before mortar is cut out we establish which of the two applies to you, if either. Listed building consent covers the mortar itself, whereas conservation area control is about appearance, so a matching repair remains maintenance. Ask Dorset Council and they will put the status in writing.
The lane is narrow. Where would the scaffold and van go?
That is agreed at the survey rather than discovered on the first morning. Langton Matravers has tight frontages and lanes with no verge, so we work out whether a platform can stand on your ground, whether anything oversails the footway and needs a licence, and where the mixer and the sand can sit without blocking a neighbour in. Materials arrive in one load. Where nothing fits outside, the job runs off a tower instead.
Does the coast designation restrict a rebuilt front wall?
It brings design scrutiny, not a refusal. Langton Matravers falls within the Dorset National Landscape (formerly the Dorset AONB), so anything visible from the road or the coast path is judged on how it sits in that setting. Rebuilding a front wall in the materials already used along the street is ordinary repair. Raising its height, switching to a different stone or capping it in something modern is the point at which you should ask before starting.
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Have someone look at the wall properly
A free site visit in Langton Matravers, photographs of every fault we find, and an itemised written quote with the mix and the method on it.