Bricklaying in Tarrant Monkton
Lime repointing, wet base courses put right, thatched chimney stacks, garden walls and gate piers, priced off a proper look at the wall.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Last updated
The work
Brick and flint in Tarrant Monkton: what we do about a damp wall base
In a village standing on the floor of the Tarrant valley, brickwork gives way from the ground upwards rather than from the sky down. The joints in the lowest courses go first, because that is where a solid wall is trying to get rid of the water in the ground beneath it.
We rake back what has perished on a Tarrant Monkton wall, put a mortar in that is softer and more porous than the brick and flint around it, and leave every sound joint alone.
Water is the short explanation for most failing walls in Tarrant Monkton. The river runs a few strides from some of them, the ground underneath is silt and gravel with the water table sitting high in it from about November, and a solid wall copes by letting that moisture evaporate out of its joints. Fill the joints with something hard and it leaves through the face of the brick instead, which is the expensive route.
What goes wrong on a Tarrant Monkton wall: Base courses gone soft and powdery behind a band of cement somebody applied years ago. A length of flint boundary wall bellied out after a wet winter. Or a stack standing clear of the thatch that has begun dropping grit into the gutter.
We come out to Tarrant Monkton, stand in front of the wall, tap it, and get down to the bottom of it where the story usually is. You get a plain survey and a written itemised price for the part that will not wait. Looking costs nothing and neither does the price.
The work
Brickwork jobs on the floor of the Tarrant valley
The lowest four or five courses. On the walls nearest the water this is where nearly every job starts. Ground that stays wet for months feeds moisture and salt up into a solid wall, the wall gives it back through the joints, and where the joints have been sealed it comes out through the brick face instead.
What you see is mortar you can pull out with a finger, brick faces spalling off in coin sized pieces after a frost, and a pale tide line of salt above them. No sealer fixes that. We rake that band out by hand, cut out the dead bricks and match them from a reclaimed batch, point it back breathable, and cut in a damp proof course at the base where the construction will take one.
Flint with brick banding, pointed back and not over. Most of the older fabric along the street in Tarrant Monkton is a solid wall of flint with brick bands, quoins and window dressings, all bedded in lime. Flint absorbs nothing itself, so all the weathering lands on the joint, and that joint is holding the stones in as well as shedding rain. We rake by hand and only as deep as the wall will safely give up, and the new mix is an NHL lime kept under the strength of a soft handmade brick, with the sand matched for grain and colour.
A chimney on a thatched roof finishes well above the ridge, leaving a lot of soft period brick out in the weather on every side, so the stack comes down to sound work and goes back up course by course with the flaunching re-formed. That is work at height off a tower or a scaffold under work at height rules, priced on a line of its own. The flint and brick walls between the cottages and down towards the ford almost all fail downwards from the top, so we rebuild the bowed and bellied lengths, reinstate brick on edge or tile creasing, and reset gate piers shoved out of plumb, on a proper footing where the original was built on next to no foundation. A crack stepping out of the corner of a window head is usually the lintel rather than the mortar.
How it runs
How brick and flint repairs are run here
Thomas looks at the wall with you, checks how the joints and bricks have weathered and whether anything has moved, and prices it himself. The one quote covers the work from the first course to the last.
The quote is broken down by elevation: access, raking out, the mortar mix, brick replacement, any rebuilding and disposal. An old wall in Tarrant Monkton may be brick, flint or both, and the mix is matched to what is there, which on older work usually means lime rather than cement. A garden or boundary wall is worked off the ground or a low tower, while a gable or chimney needs scaffold.
Rubble and old mortar are bagged and removed, and paths are swept every evening. If a section proves loose once it is opened up, the work pauses while you look at a photo and the added cost.
A like for like repair is maintenance, needing no planning permission or building control, even inside the Cranborne Chase National Landscape. On a listed cottage, outbuilding or garden wall, repointing counts as alteration and wants listed building consent first. If you are unsure whether a conservation area covers the wall, the council can tell you, and Thomas asks before quoting. Raising or rebuilding a boundary wall meets the height limits in Planning Portal guidance on garden walls, and a wall on a shared line brings in the Party Wall etc. Act 1996.
Cost
What sets the cost of brick and flint work
The wall itself sets the pace. Brick is quicker to rebuild than flint. Flint has to be laid a few courses at a time and left to firm up before the next lift, so a flint panel takes days where brick would take hours. A mixed wall with brick quoins and flint panels sits between the two.
How deep the joints have gone. Raking out by hand is slow, but it protects soft old brick. Where the joints are open deep into the wall, or faces have spalled, the hours go up.
Access. A garden wall worked from the lawn is simple. A wall you can only reach across a neighbour's ground needs their say-so first. A chimney or gable needs scaffold, and the work at height rules are why it is priced as a separate line.
Water at the base. A wall that has stood wet at its foot through a winter can be soft well above the ground. How far that runs up decides how much has to come down and be relaid.
Before you sign anything, find out from the other quotes whether the joints are raked by hand or with a disc, and to what depth, whether the new mortar is lime or cement and the reason, and whether scaffold is included.
If something has moved
A wall leaning, or bricks coming loose
Ring rather than use the form. A chimney with loose bricks at the top, a garden wall bulging out after a wet spell, or a coping that has lifted all go to the front of the queue.
Keep people and cars away from anything leaning, and do not try to push it back. On the first visit we make it safe by taking down loose bricks, propping or fencing off a wall, and sheeting an open stack. Thomas then prices the proper repair once the extent of the movement is clear. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. Missed us? We return the call as soon as we can.
The one local thing
One conservation area covers the whole village, walls included
Tarrant Monkton sits inside the Tarrant Valley Conservation Area, and not on the edge of it: the designation takes in the street, the cottages and the boundary walls between them. What it controls is appearance, not repair.
Put the same material back in the same mix with the same joint and you are maintaining a building. Change how the wall reads and you have altered the character of a designated area, and a soft red and flint elevation finished in grey cement with a hard ribbon joint announces itself from the far side of the lane.
Being inside the conservation area is not the same as being listed, and Tarrant Monkton parish has plenty of both, so check your own address rather than the village. The listing net reaches past houses too: the footbridge over the ford is listed in its own right, which tells you how easily an outbuilding or a garden wall is caught by one, and on anything listed the consent is needed even when what goes back is what was there.
Who you are dealing with
A firm near enough to come back and check
Based in Boscombe, we are fifteen miles from the village and cover Tarrant Monkton, the Tarrant valley, Blandford Forum, Blandford Camp and Spetisbury on DT11, near enough to come back for a second look at a wall. Dorset Council is the authority.
You deal directly with the owner, Thomas Hannen, who prices your wall himself. His company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. One verified customer scored us 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the itemised written quote come free. Before you book a visit in Tarrant Monkton, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Tarrant Monkton?
Most repairs in Tarrant Monkton 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 Tarrant Monkton |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Tarrant Monkton. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Tarrant Valley Conservation Area (Tarrant Monkton). Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Tarrant Monkton. 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 Tarrant Monkton
What does the Tarrant Valley Conservation Area mean for pointing?
The finish of the joint is the part it cares about. A conservation area controls appearance, and on an old elevation the mortar is most of what you actually see from a distance, so the profile and the colour are not a free choice. Like for like is repair. Anything altering the look, including striking a flush joint back into a deep recess, is a change, and Dorset Council would want asking about it.
Is All Saints the only listed building in the village?
Nowhere near it: Tarrant Monkton records 27 listed entries and the Church of All Saints is only the obvious one. Most of the rest are cottages, barns, and in some cases boundary and garden walls in their own right. That last group surprises people, because a wall can be listed without the house behind it being listed. Look the address up before ordering work on anything that looks older than the road.
Does the Cranborne Chase designation affect a rebuilt wall?
Only if the rebuild changes what people see. The landscape designation over Tarrant Monkton puts design under scrutiny wherever the work is visible, so putting a wall back on the same line in the same brick and the same bond raises nothing whatsoever. Facing it in something different, raising the height, or rebuilding in rendered block where brick stood, does. The test is whether the finished thing looks like the thing it replaced.
Can a low cottage be pointed without a full scaffold?
On a single storey elevation, usually. We work off a low tower or a hop up, which means no ties drilled into the wall and nothing standing outside for weeks on end. Above that height, or where the ground falls away behind the wall, scaffold is safer and quicker. Here we also keep the standards off the lane where we can, because the road through Tarrant Monkton is not wide enough to lose a metre of it.
Will one freshly pointed elevation look different from the others?
For the first year it will look newer, then it settles down. Lime lightens as it carbonates and takes a couple of seasons to lose the fresh look, so a wall pointed in September is still obviously new the following spring. We mix the whole job from one delivery of sand so there is no variation inside it, and where an elevation returns around a corner we stop the new work at the corner, not mid wall.
Nearby, and next door
Bricklaying near Tarrant Monkton
Nearby places we also cover for bricklaying, with straight-line distances from Tarrant Monkton, and the other trades we offer in Tarrant Monkton itself.
Bricklaying nearby
Our other trades in Tarrant Monkton
Brickwork and repointing guides
Lime or cement mortar: which do you need? Single storey extension: planning and building regs Subsidence cracks: which ones matterEverything we do in Blandford Forum Bricklaying, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
Get a written price for the brickwork in Tarrant Monkton
Tell us what the wall is doing and we will come and look at it. Free visit, itemised written quote, and a straight answer about what is wrong.