Bricklaying in Lymington
Brick and stone repairs from the Quay to Pennington. We look at why the wall failed before we price putting it back, and the written quote is itemised.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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Before anyone repoints a cracked wall in Lymington, it is worth finding out where the rainwater is going. A surprising number of cracks here move with the seasons because of water in the ground, and pointing a live crack simply cracks again.
Brickwork round Lymington fails in three main ways. Diagonal cracking stepping up through the brickwork near a corner or a window, often on a house with a big tree in the garden. Pointing that has weathered back to nothing on an exposed elevation, with brick faces starting to go with it.
And walls in the garden, the retaining runs on the sloping streets down towards the river, that have leaned far enough to worry somebody. We come out for free, look at the whole wall, not the crack, photograph it, and give you a written price that says what we are doing and why.
The work
Brick and stone jobs in Lymington
The later brickwork takes a cement mix. Most of the estates around Pennington and the edges of town are cavity built in facing brick with a bucket handle joint, and on those the mortar goes back as a gauged sand and cement mix rather than lime.
Half the housing in Lymington went up between 1945 and 1982 and another quarter after that, so most of the town's brickwork is post-war cavity wall. It is all in the preparation: rake the joint to depth, get the dust out, wet the background and point back. Where an elevation faces the prevailing weather the joints erode faster than the sheltered sides, so it is normal to do one face of a house and leave the others for years yet, and we will say so rather than quote all four.
The older brick in the town centre. Closer in, the houses and the terraces are older, softer and often solid rather than cavity, and there are 160 listed entries in Lymington. That brick wants lime, a joint finished flush and a sample panel agreed before we start on an elevation. Cement on a soft brick front here is the most expensive mistake to undo, because it takes the face off the brick and then the brick has to be cut out and replaced.
Stepped cracks over an opening usually mean the lintel has failed or a steel is rusting inside the wall, and that is cut out and replaced with the brickwork rebuilt over it. Cracks that run down towards the ground are a different conversation and we treat them as such. Where a crack is live we stitch and repair after the cause is dealt with, not before, and if what you actually need is a structural engineer, not a bricklayer we will tell you that at the visit.
The ground falls away in a lot of Lymington and it shrinks and swells, so plenty of garden walls are quietly holding a bank back without ever having been designed to, and where the rainwater ends up beside a footing is a structural question and not just a damp one. Those bow, then the coping tips, then a section goes. We rebuild off a proper footing with weep holes so water is not trapped behind, rebed the coping and reset gate piers that have moved. On a new wall Planning Portal guidance on garden walls sets out the height allowed before planning permission, and where a wall stands on the line with next door, which is common in the terraces, the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 applies.
New work is extensions, garden rooms, porches and rebuilt returns, in cavity construction with a blockwork inner leaf, an outer leaf in stretcher bond, wall ties at proper centres, cavity trays and a visible damp proof course. Widening an opening or removing a load bearing wall brings building control in, and Planning Portal guidance on external walls sets out where that starts.
How it runs
Garden walls, cracks and rebuilds on clay ground
Thomas looks at the wall in person, and at the ground it stands on. Much of Lymington is river terrace sand and gravel over clay, so ground movement is patchy, and where the clay is shallow it shrinks in a hot summer and swells in winter, so before anyone talks about filling a stepped crack in a garden wall or an extension, he checks whether it is still moving.
A downpipe spilling at the base of a wall often turns out to be part of the reason. Your written quote itemises access, the raking out, the mortar mix, each elevation's area, brick replacement or rebuilding, and disposal.
One company is responsible for all of the work. Garden and boundary walls need no platform, the gable of a Pennington semi comes off a tower or scaffold, and a terrace fronting the pavement may need a licence. Open work is sheeted when it rains, the site is tidied each day, and broken brick and old mortar go away with us. If a section proves loose behind a sound face, we photograph it and price the extra before touching it.
Repointing or rebuilding an unlisted wall like for like is repair and needs no application. In the historic town centre, which is the Lymington conservation area, a new wall or a change of brick or mortar colour wants checking. The town has a great many listed entries, and changing how a listed building looks needs New Forest District Council's consent first. Other permissions you may require sets out the whole picture.
Cost
Joints, bricks and ground: what a brickwork price rests on
Brickwork in Lymington has no rate per square metre, because two walls of the same size can be a day's work or a week's.
Getting the old mortar out. Hand raking is slow but it is the only safe way on softer brick. A disc cutter is faster and can widen joints and chip the arrises. The depth of the old mortar and the number of spalled faces decide the hours.
Matching. New work has to match the old in colour, texture and strength. Bricks for a post-war semi are easy to find. A soft red on an older house in the centre may mean reclaimed stock and a few trial panels of mortar before the real work starts.
The ground. Where the clay is shallow, a wall that cracked because a downpipe soaks its foot, or because a tree draws water out beside it, needs that fixed too. Otherwise the repair simply cracks again.
Access. A low garden wall is simple. A three storey gable, a chimney stack or a retaining wall with a drop behind it is not. How long the platform stays up matters as much as its height, and the work at height rules give it a line of its own.
Ask anyone else whether the joints will be raked by hand or with a disc, and how deep; what mortar mix goes back; and whether the scaffold is in the price.
If something has moved
A wall that has cracked, leaned or dropped bricks
Keep people, cars and children away from anything leaning or loose, especially a retaining wall holding up a bank or a garden wall beside a parking space. Do not try to push it back or prop it with the car.
Ring us instead of using the form, and say what it holds back and what sits beneath it. The first visit makes it safe by taking down loose courses, propping it or fencing it off, and diverting any water running into the crack. After that we price the repair. Planned brickwork runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. If you cannot get through, leave a message and we will ring you.
Worth knowing
Sort the water before you repair the crack
Where that clay lies near the surface the ground is cohesive, which is a dull way of saying it swells when it is wet and shrinks when it dries. Foundations sit on it and move a little with it. That is why so many cracks here are seasonal: they open through a dry late summer, close again over winter, and the owner repoints them every couple of years wondering why it never holds.
A large tree or a hedge close to the wall makes it worse, drawing water out of the ground on one side of the house only, which is what turns even movement into a diagonal crack stepping up from a corner. So does water being put into the ground right beside the foundation, and that is the one you can actually do something about.
So before you pay anyone to fix brickwork, walk round the house in heavy rain. A gutter overflowing at a joint, a downpipe discharging onto a flowerbed, a gully choked with leaves, a soakaway too close to the wall or a patio falling back towards the house all deliver water straight to the one place it does harm. Approved Document H sets out where surface water is supposed to go, and it is not against your footing.
Get that right first, watch a crack through one full cycle of seasons and mark the ends with a pencil and a date, and then repair. The repair itself is straightforward: rake back to sound mortar, stitch across the crack where it needs it, and point in a matched mix. Doing it in that order is the difference between one visit and four.
Who you are dealing with
Your bricklayer for Lymington and the SO41 villages
Lymington is 12.5 miles from our Boscombe base. We work across the town and Pennington, and out through Walhampton, Boldre and Sway to Everton and Milford on Sea. New Forest District Council plans for the town, Pennington, Everton and Milford on Sea, the National Park Authority for Boldre, Sway and Walhampton, and the District does building control for all of it.
The company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Thomas Hannen runs it, and he is the one who looks at your wall and works out the price. Our Checkatrade page carries a verified customer's score of 10 out of 10. The site visit is free, and so is the written quote with every item listed. Before you book a visit in Lymington, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Lymington?
Most repairs in Lymington 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 Lymington |
|---|---|
| Who decides | New Forest District Council is the planning authority for Lymington. The National Park boundary runs close by, and the Park's property map shows which side an address falls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Lymington Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Lymington. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Lymington. |
Questions
Questions about bricklaying in Lymington
Lymington has 160 listed entries. How do we check ours?
The national list is searchable by address, and New Forest District will tell you if you would rather ask. The entries here run from the Parish Church of St Thomas the Apostle through to terraces of otherwise ordinary houses, and 160 is a great many for a town this size, so on the older streets the answer is often yes. Where a building is listed the mortar forms part of it and consent comes before the joints are opened.
Ours is a 1980s terrace in Pennington. What fails?
The perpends on the weather side and the mortar under the sills. 26.1% of Lymington stock dates from 1983 to 2008 with the peak in the 1980s, and terraces and semis together account for nearly half the dwellings, so these are thin skinned cavity walls with narrow joints. The vertical joints shrink back first and let water through to the cavity. It is normally a rake out and repoint of one elevation instead of anything structural.
Our terrace shares a wall with next door. Whose job is the brickwork?
The front and back of your own house are yours to deal with. Where a party wall between two Lymington terraces is involved both owners have an interest, and work that cuts into it or underpins it means telling the neighbour in advance. Usually it is one owner's front elevation, and we quote for whoever asks us. If the neighbour wants theirs done at the same time we can run both off one platform.
Our street is narrow with permit parking. Does that hold you up?
It shapes the start instead of stopping the job. On the tighter Lymington streets we sort a suspended bay or a permit for the van beforehand, take the sand and the bricks in one drop rather than several, and keep the mixer off the footway. Anything standing over the pavement needs a licence from the highway authority and lead time to get it. All of that is settled at the survey so nothing waits on the morning.
Should we worry about a stepped crack near the bay window?
A bay carries the least load and often sits on the shallowest footing, so it is the first part of a house to move. Where Lymington's terrace sand and gravel drains freely, the more common trigger is water: a leaking gulley or a downpipe emptying at that corner softening what the bay stands on. We check the drainage, look at whether the crack is wider at the top or the bottom, and only then choose between stitching it and taking the bay down.
Nearby, and next door
Bricklaying near Lymington
Nearby places we also cover for bricklaying, with straight-line distances from Lymington, and the other trades we offer in Lymington itself.
Bricklaying nearby
Our other trades in Lymington
Brickwork and repointing guides
Lime or cement mortar: which do you need? Single storey extension: planning and building regs Subsidence cracks: which ones matterBuilders in Lymington: all our building work Everything we do in Lymington Bricklaying, all areas Every area we cover
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Find out what the wall is actually doing
A free site visit in Lymington, photographs of the fault and its cause, and an itemised written quote you can hold anyone else's against.