Bricklaying in Owermoigne
Lime repointing, stacks, cob plinths, barn walls and roadside walls, done the way an old wall needs rather than the fast way.
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 Owermoigne: soft walls, hard mortar, and what to do about it
The older walls in Owermoigne were built soft, in lime, so they could take water in and let it back out again. A lot of them were repointed in hard sand and cement at some point in the last fifty years, and that is where nearly all the brickwork trouble here comes from.
The cement traps the damp and pushes it out through the brick face instead of the joint, which is why the faces are crumbling and the joints look fine.
Owermoigne walls need a bricklayer for a handful of reasons. Brick and stone faces flaking off at the bottom of a wall. A chimney stack that has started shedding mortar down the roof. A step crack over a window or across the corner of a single storey extension. Or a roadside wall that a lorry has clipped on the bend.
We come out, look at the whole building rather than the patch you have spotted, and tell you what is actually happening in the wall. Sometimes the answer is that it needs nothing yet and a gutter needs fixing instead. The site visit and the itemised written quote are free either way, and it is Thomas who comes out to look.
The work
Brickwork jobs in and around Owermoigne
Old solid walls in lime. The village core is rubble stone and soft handmade brick, often mixed in the same elevation, with brick used for the quoins, the window reveals and the chimney, and no cavity anywhere in it.
We rake the joints out by hand rather than with a disc, because a disc widens the joint and takes the arris off a soft brick in a single pass, and point back in an NHL lime mortar matched for sand, colour and texture. The finish is kept slightly back from the face on rubble work and struck bucket handle or weather struck on brick, never smeared flush across the face of the stone, which is what makes an old cottage look rendered from the road.
Plinths, stacks and roadside walls. Several of the older buildings in Owermoigne are cob sitting on a brick or rubble plinth, and the plinth is doing a real job: it keeps the earth wall clear of the splash line. When it loses its mortar or a few units, water gets behind it and the cob above starts to go, so rebuilding a plinth course by course in lime is a repair worth doing early and a very expensive one to leave. On a thatched or tiled cottage the stack is the most weathered brickwork on the building: we repoint above roof level, cut out perished brick, renew the flaunching round the pots and rebuild from the flashing up. Thatch changes how the access is set out and we take that seriously, no grinders, no naked flame, sheeting over the coat. The lanes are narrow and the walls sit right on them, so they get hit, and we rebuild damaged lengths on a dug foundation, reset coping and rebuild gate piers properly bonded. The former farm buildings round the village bring blocked up cart openings cracked along the joint between old and new, and bowed gables that want stitching.
How it runs
Brick and stone repairs around the village
Thomas comes out and looks at the wall, the mortar and anything that has shifted. His quote is split elevation by elevation: access, cutting out damaged brick or stone, replacement brick, the mortar mix, and making good, with waste removal on its own line. One company answers for it from the first brick out to the last joint.
It is a long way to go back for bricks, so the matching brick and the lime are sourced before the first day and the wall is never left half built. A wall beside a lane gets cones and a safe way past. The site is tidied each evening and the rubble goes with us. If a crack runs deeper than it looked, you are sent a picture and a price before any more comes down.
Inside the Owermoigne Conservation Area, which Dorset Council drew round the historic core, changing how a wall looks, or taking down a front boundary wall, can need the council's permission. The parish has thirteen listed entries, including the parish church and Moignes Court, and on those even like for like repointing needs listed building consent. Planning Portal guidance on garden walls sets the height limits for a new or raised wall. Anything structural goes through building control, and the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 covers a wall you share.
Cost
Matching old brick and lime on a village wall
Brickwork in Owermoigne has no rate per square metre, because a wall tells you little until somebody has looked at the joints and the brick.
The wall itself. A thatched cottage with a stack on the ridge, a rubble stone barn up a farm track and a modern bungalow with a low garden wall are three different set ups. Soft old brick and stone want a lime mortar and hand raking. A modern wall can take cement.
The ground. The ground here is clay, which swells in wet spells and shrinks in dry ones. A crack that opens and closes with the seasons may come from water near the foundation, or from a tree, and that has to be found before the brickwork is repaired or the crack comes back. Approved Document H covers where rainwater should go.
Access. A stack or a gable needs a platform, and the work at height rules cover how long it stands as well as how big it is. A wall up a farm track may mean everything is carried in.
Matching. Finding a brick that matches, and a mortar colour and joint that match, takes time, and it is the part that shows.
Ask other builders how deep they rake, whether the mortar has been matched, and how they will stop a crack coming back.
If something has moved
Loose brick on a stack, or a wall that has moved
Loose brick above head height, or a wall that has started to lean, needs people kept well back and a phone call to us. Out in Owermoigne it is usually a roadside wall that a vehicle has clipped on a bend, or a stack top loosened by a gale.
The first job on site is making it safe, by taking down what is loose or propping the wall, and only then work out why it moved and price the proper repair. On a listed house the safety work is kept to the minimum. Our hours for scheduled jobs are Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. Something that has moved needs a call, not the form, and an unanswered call gets returned as soon as we are able.
The one local thing
The ground moves, so watch where your rainwater goes
The ground around Owermoigne is cohesive and it shrinks and swells with the seasons, which matters more to brickwork than most people expect. Clay that dries out in a hot summer pulls away from a footing and lets it drop a fraction. Then it takes water back on through the winter, swells and lifts.
Shallow foundations feel that most, which in practice means garden walls, porches, conservatory dwarf walls and single storey extensions rather than the house itself. The signature is a step crack running diagonally through the joints, wider at one end than the other, that opens in late summer and closes again by spring.
What to do with that. The single most useful thing is to control where rainwater lands. A gutter running over at one corner, a downpipe discharging onto the soil beside a wall or a soakaway sited too close to a footing will make the ground beside that wall behave completely differently to the ground three metres away, and that difference is what cracks a wall. Approved Document H is the document that governs where surface water is allowed to go, and getting it right is far cheaper than underpinning.
Trees matter too: a mature tree drawing water out of clay in a dry summer can move a garden wall on its own. Before you pay anybody to rebuild a cracked wall, ask what is going to stop it happening again, because rebuilding it in the same place with the same drainage buys you a few years and no more.
Who you are dealing with
Your bricklayer, and how far we travel
Boscombe, where we are based, is about 22 miles from Owermoigne, and our brickwork covers the villages between Wareham and Dorchester: Crossways, Warmwell, Winfrith Newburgh and Wool among them. Dorset Council deals with planning, listed building consent and building control.
Thomas Hannen, who owns the business, prices every wall himself, standing in front of it. We trade as Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales, number 15471719. A Checkatrade customer whose review was verified gave us 10 out of 10. There is no charge for coming out, and the itemised quote is written and free. Before you book a visit in Owermoigne, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Owermoigne?
Most repairs in Owermoigne 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 Owermoigne |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Owermoigne. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Owermoigne Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Owermoigne. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Owermoigne. |
Questions
Questions about bricklaying in Owermoigne
Do you do the brickwork on thatched cottages?
We do the masonry, not the thatch. On a thatched cottage the wall is sheltered from above but takes splash at the base, so the failure is usually in the bottom metre and around the openings. We work off a tower instead of leaning anything against the thatch, and we sheet the roof edge before starting. Thatching is a separate trade and we would not put a hand to it.
Why has the crack come back after being repaired?
Because the mortar was the symptom. The ground at Owermoigne is cohesive with a significant shrink and swell rating, so a shallow footing rises in winter and drops in summer and any crack above it reopens on the same line. Filling it does nothing. We open the ground at the crack, look at what the wall is standing on and either underpin that bay or rebuild it so it can move.
Moignes Court is listed. Does that affect our repair?
Only if your own address is one of the 13 listed entries at Owermoigne, and the Parish Church of St Michael and Moignes Court are two of them. The village does have its own conservation area over the historic core, so there a like for like repair is still maintenance, but a different mortar colour or joint that changes how a wall looks is worth raising with Dorset Council. Outside that area an ordinary house carries no appearance control. On a listed building the consent, the mortar and the joint finish are settled before we start.
Is twenty two miles too far for a small repair?
Not on its own. Owermoigne is 22 miles from our base, so we would rather run a small job in with a full day out here than make two short trips, and that sometimes means waiting a week or two for the right slot. The site visit and the written itemised quote are still free, and Thomas Hannen still comes out in person to look at the wall.
Can a crack be stitched without rebuilding the wall?
Most cracks can be. We cut the damaged bricks out in a stepped pattern, stitch across the line with bed joint reinforcement and rebuild only the affected section. A wall comes right down when the footing has failed or it has gone too far out of plumb to save. At Owermoigne the cause is usually seasonal ground movement, and that gets dealt with at the base rather than the top.
Nearby, and next door
Bricklaying near Owermoigne
Nearby places we also cover for bricklaying, with straight-line distances from Owermoigne, and the other trades we offer in Owermoigne itself.
Bricklaying nearby
Our other trades in Owermoigne
Brickwork and repointing guides
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Find out what that wall actually needs
A free site visit, a straight answer about lime or cement, and a written itemised quote you can compare against anyone else's.