Bricklaying in Swanage

Purbeck stone walls. A great deal of the older town is local limestone laid as rubble or roughly coursed, in a lime mortar, and it is solid wall construction that has to stay breathable. Over a quarter of the stock here predates 1919, with the biggest single slice pre-1900.

The joints are wide and no two are the same shape, so it is slow, careful work, not a run along a straight bed. We rake out by hand, never with a disc cutter, and point back in an NHL lime mix with the sand matched for colour and grain, finished so the mortar sits at the stone face rather than smeared out over it. A sample panel goes up and dries in daylight before the rest of the elevation is touched.

The Victorian terraces pair stone walls with soft red brick around the windows, at the corners and up the stacks, and that brick is often the first thing to go. Two materials on one elevation need two mixes and two profiles, and treating the whole wall as one job is how faces end up spalling. Stacks in Swanage stand in the wind on every side, with the worst of it off the south west: cracked flaunching, soft top courses, a lean. We rebuild course for course, reuse what is sound and match what is not. That is work at height off a tower or a scaffold under work at height rules, priced as its own line.

Garden walls, steps and retaining walls. Swanage runs up a hill and a lot of the boundary walls are holding a garden back rather than just marking it. Those fail because of water behind them and a coping that has stopped shedding, not because of the pointing, so repointing a bowed retaining wall is money wasted. We rebuild bowed lengths with the drainage and weep holes they never had, reinstate copings to take the weathering, rebuild gate piers, and set a damp proof course in at the base where a wall will take one.

Away from the old town centre a lot of Swanage is cavity built, and with the sea this close the ties in that cavity corrode faster than they do inland. The sign is a crack running dead level along one bed joint right across an elevation, sometimes with a slight bulge. It is not a rebuild. We confirm it with a borescope through one small hole, fit replacement stainless ties on a set pattern, make the holes good and repoint the cracked courses. Once a brick or a soft stone has shed its face, pointing round it only tidies the damage, so we cut out and replace with reclaimed or handmade stock matched on size, colour and texture, taking from a hidden elevation to keep a front elevation right. On new extension and garage skins we specify stainless rather than galvanised for anything buried in a wall, which costs a little more once and saves an elevation later.

You cannot price a wall by its area until someone has looked at the joints, the bricks or stone, and what the wall stands on.

Where the wall is. Flats are the biggest share of homes in Swanage, so the wall is often common to a building and the freeholder signs it off. A terrace with steps to the door, a stack on a three storey house, and a bungalow with room for a tower price very differently, and the work at height rules put the platform on its own line.

Stone or brick, and the mortar. Much of old Swanage is Purbeck stone laid in lime. Matching it means sourcing stone and mixing lime mortar, which is slower than cement on a modern brick wall, and cement on stone drives damp into it.

Salt and exposure. Sea facing walls and copings take salt and driven rain from the south west, so coping stones and the top courses often need rebedding while the rest of the wall is sound.

Hidden work. A retaining wall holding a garden on the slope may need rebuilding with drainage behind it, which is a different job from repointing its face.

Put these to any quote: how deep the joints are raked and whether by hand or disc, which mortar is specified, and whether the scaffold is included.

We are 10 miles from Swanage at 80a Wolverton Road, Boscombe, and take brickwork and stonework across the town, Langton Matravers, Corfe Castle, Studland and everywhere else in BH19, all under Dorset Council.

Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, has company number 15471719 for you to check. Thomas Hannen owns it, and he looks at your wall and puts the price together himself. A verified customer marked our work 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. We do not charge for the site visit, nor for the itemised quote. Before you book a visit in Swanage, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Swanage 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.