Bricklaying in Sixpenny Handley
Lime repointing, flint and brick repair, chimney stacks and boundary walls, done the way downland walls need doing.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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Repointing an old wall at Sixpenny Handley is a lime job, not a cement one. The mortar is meant to be softer than the brick and the flint around it, and a lot of the damage on old walls up here comes from somebody pointing a soft wall in something harder than it.
Walls in Sixpenny Handley and on the Chase show trouble at the joints, at the brick faces and along the lanes. Mortar you can rake out of a joint with a finger, so the wall is holding rain instead of shedding it. Brick faces flaking away under a sill or beside a downpipe after a hard winter, which means the wall is losing its skin a course at a time. Or a boundary wall on one of the lanes that has gone out of plumb, lost its coping, or been caught by something wider than the gap.
We come out, look at the whole elevation, not the patch that shows, and say plainly what is happening and what it will cost you to put right. Sometimes that is a morning of cutting out and pointing. Sometimes it is a wall to watch through one winter before you spend anything on it. Sometimes it is a job that needs an answer from the council before anybody lifts a chisel, and we would far rather tell you that at the survey than halfway through.
The work
What goes wrong with brickwork around Handley
Flint and brick were laid in lime. The older walls in Sixpenny Handley are flint rubble through the body of the wall, brick at the corners and around the openings, often a brick lacing course running through to level it up, and lime mortar holding the lot together.
On that fabric the joint is the sacrificial part: water goes into the mortar and comes back out of the mortar, and the brick and the flint stay sound. We rake out by hand with a chisel and a hacksaw blade rather than a disc, back to sound material, then point in a lime mix knocked up to match what is there for colour, sand and strength. The joint goes back to the profile the wall has always had.
Getting cement back off a soft wall. Much of the centre of Sixpenny Handley was rebuilt after the fire in the 1890s, so a good deal of what reads as old here is late Victorian brick bedded in a soft mortar, and plenty of it was repointed in cement since. A solid wall like that has no cavity and often no DPC either, so once the joints are sealed the moisture leaves through the brick face instead. One hard frost up on the downs and the faces are spalling while the pointing still looks perfect. Taking the cement out is slow hand work and the only honest fix.
Walls along the Sixpenny Handley lanes take ivy, tractors, and water sitting on the top where the coping has slipped, and flint bedded in lime does not tolerate being pushed, so once a length is bowed we take that section down and rebuild it off the same footing, resetting the flint and putting the coping back. A stack takes weather from four sides, so the joints go first and then the flaunching cracks and feeds water down inside, which needs a tower or a scaffold and is priced as its own line.
How it runs
Brick and flint repairs, from survey to finished joint
Thomas Hannen makes the trip from Boscombe and stands at the wall with you. He checks the joints, taps for loose bricks, looks for cracks that step through the mortar, and checks the chimney stack from the ground. Older walls around Sixpenny Handley often mix brick with flint, and flint work needs its own care, because a loose flint is bedded back in rather than swapped for a brick.
The quote is written and split by elevation: scaffold or tower, raking out, the mortar mix, replacing damaged bricks or resetting flints, rebuilding any section that has moved, and waste. The work runs from start to finish under the one quote. Loose material is cleared every day, mortar is mixed on boards to protect your drive, and the rubble leaves with us. If we find something that could not be seen before, like a cracked lintel, you are shown a photograph and given a price before we carry on.
Like for like repair on an unlisted building needs no planning permission and no building control. There is no conservation area in the village, but it is inside the Cranborne Chase National Landscape. On the listed buildings, the church among them, even a change in mortar can need listed building consent from Dorset Council.
Cost
Joints, flints and scaffold: what the job costs depends on
We do not price brickwork by the square metre, because the size of the wall says nothing about what the joints are like.
Access. A cottage right on the village street may leave no room to keep a scaffold up for long. A farm building on open ground has room all round. A garden wall on a bank needs no platform at all. The work at height rules set what is needed, and how long it stands matters as much as how big it is.
Brick, flint or both. Plain brick is quick to rake and repoint. Flint panels between brick courses are slower, because each flint has to be checked and any loose ones reset.
How deep the damage goes. Surface weathering needs repointing. Bricks with their faces blown off need cutting out and replacing. A wall that has moved needs taking down and rebuilding. Each takes very different time.
The mix. A soft old brick needs a lime mortar that is weaker than the brick. Cement holds water against the face and the frost breaks it off.
When comparing quotes, ask the rake depth and whether it is done by hand or disc, what mortar mix is proposed, and whether the scaffold is in the price.
If something has moved
A leaning wall, loose bricks or a cracked chimney
If bricks have fallen or a wall is leaning, keep people and cars away from it, and do not try to push it back yourself. A chimney stack with loose bricks near the top is the most dangerous, because it is high up and above a roof or a path.
On the first visit we make it safe, which may mean taking down loose courses or putting up props, and then price the proper repair once we can see how far the movement goes. Our booked working hours are Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. For anything like this, ring instead of using the form. If we miss your call, we will ring you back as soon as we can.
The one local thing
In the Chase, what the wall looks like is a planning matter
Handley sits inside the Cranborne Chase National Landscape, and the practical effect of that on brickwork is about appearance rather than structure. Repairing what is already there does not engage it at all: a like for like repoint in a matching lime mix is maintenance wherever you live. What the designation changes is anything that alters how the outside of the building reads.
On this land the permitted development right to clad or render an external wall has been taken away, so covering brick or flint with render, pebble dash, tile or timber is a planning application here rather than a free choice, and the Planning Portal guidance on external walls sets out where that right applies and where it has gone.
So the useful advice in Sixpenny Handley is about materials, and it is worth settling before anybody orders anything. If a stretch of wall has to be rebuilt or a run of brick replaced, what goes back should be the same size, the same colour range and the same texture as what came out, because a modern wirecut brick beside soft handmade work never settles down however good the joint is.
We build a sample panel where the wall will take one, so you and a planning officer are both looking at the same thing instead of a description, and the mix, the sand and the joint profile go in the quote in the words an officer needs to read. Sourcing reclaimed brick and picking flint takes time, so say early if the wall faces the road, because that is the elevation anyone is going to comment on.
Who you are dealing with
A bricklayer for Handley, Pentridge and Farnham
We come 17.1 miles from Boscombe to repair brick and flint in Sixpenny Handley, Pentridge, Farnham, Tollard Royal and the rest of SP5. Planning and listed buildings here are Dorset Council's.
Every wall is looked at by Thomas Hannen before a figure is given, because the firm is his: Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. One verified customer has scored us 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. You pay nothing for us to come and look, or for the written quote with each item listed. Before you book a visit in Sixpenny Handley, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Sixpenny Handley?
Most repairs in Sixpenny Handley 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 Sixpenny Handley |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Sixpenny Handley. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Sixpenny Handley, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Sixpenny Handley. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | Inside the Cranborne Chase & West Wiltshire Downs National Landscape (formerly AONB), so anything visible from outside gets more attention. |
Questions
Questions about bricklaying in Sixpenny Handley
Does the Cranborne Chase designation reach an ordinary repair?
The Cranborne Chase designation reaches anything visible, which is not the same as everything. Sixpenny Handley sits inside the Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs landscape designation, so design gets scrutinised on work that reads from the road. A repoint in matching mortar changes nothing anyone can see and raises no question at all. A new boundary wall to the lane, a rebuilt pier or a change of brick is a different proposition and worth checking with Dorset Council first.
The church is listed. Could our cottage be caught too?
It can be, if you are inside its curtilage. Seven listed entries are recorded in Sixpenny Handley, the Church of St Mary among them, and anything standing in the grounds of a listed building before 1948 can carry the same protection without appearing separately on the list. Walls, barns and old outbuildings are the usual surprises. The list entry for the main building is the place to look before work is ordered.
You are a long way out. Will you come and price it?
Yes. Sixpenny Handley is about seventeen miles from us and we work across that side of Dorset, so the distance changes the diary instead of the answer. Thomas comes out himself, walks the wall, and writes the quote afterwards as itemised lines you can read against each other. Both the visit and the written quote are free. We would rather look at a small job and tell you it can wait than not come.
Where does the raked out mortar end up?
In a barrow, then a bag, then off the site. Repointing makes far more spoil than people expect, most of it fine grey dust that gets into a lawn and stays there, so we sheet the ground under the working elevation before a tool comes out and lift the sheets at the end of each day. Planting against the wall gets covered rather than trampled. Nothing is buried in the garden or washed into a drain.
What can I look at myself before you come out?
Quite a lot, all of it from the ground. Run a key along a joint at waist height and see whether it turns to sand or stops on something solid. Look for joints recessed noticeably deeper than the rest, usually under the cills and on the weather side. And look at where the soil and the paths sit against the brick. If you can tell us that before we drive over, we know what to bring with us.
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Free quote
Get the wall looked at before another winter
Tell us what the wall is doing and we will come and look at it. A free site visit and a written itemised quote, with the mortar mix and the method written down.