Bricklaying in Tolpuddle

Brick and flint walls. A lot of the older walling in Tolpuddle is flint with brick used for the quoins, the lacing courses and the openings, and every bit of it was bedded in lime.

On Tolpuddle walls, flint is the slower of the two to point because the joints are deep and irregular and there is nothing flat to work off, so it is done by hand, in lifts, in a natural hydraulic lime graded softer than what it beds. A proud, weather struck joint on a flint and brick wall is visible from the road and it sheds water onto the flints instead of off them.

Plinths under cob and rendered walls. Several of the cottages in Tolpuddle sit on a masonry plinth with something softer above, and the plinth is the part that keeps everything above it dry. When the plinth pointing fails, water rises into a wall that has no damp proof course and never had one. Putting that right is careful work and it is the highest value repointing in the village, because it protects a wall you cannot simply rebuild.

On a thatched or tiled cottage the stack is often the only masonry standing clear of the roof: repointing above the roof line, renewing the flaunching that beds the pots, cutting out spalling brick in the top courses. That means a scaffold, priced as a line you can see rather than added later. The walls along the street in Tolpuddle do more weathering than any house wall, wet from both sides with nothing over them but their coping, so loose coping gets re-bedded first, every time, and a bowed length comes down and goes back on a corrected footing with the same brick and flint. The newer houses at the edge bring cavity faults instead: a lintel rusting over a window and lifting the course above it, or ties cracking the outer leaf on a line.

The size of the wall tells you little until you know what it is made of and what state the joints are in.

Brick, stone or flint. Brick joints are regular and quick to rake. Flint joints are deep and uneven, and each one is filled by hand, so a flint panel takes far longer than a brick one of the same size.

Matching the old work. An older wall needs reclaimed or handmade brick to match, and a lime mortar mixed to suit the colour and strength of what is there. Sourcing the right brick can take longer than laying it.

Getting to it. A garden wall at waist height needs nothing. A house wall usually wants a tower or a scaffold, and a roadside wall means managing the footway. How long the platform stands matters as much as its size, and the work at height rules put it on the quote as a line of its own.

What is behind the face. A wall that bulges or has a hollow core may need taking down and rebuilding rather than pointing, and you will be told which before any money is spent.

Ask any other builder what mix they will use, how the brick will be matched, and whether the scaffold is included.

We cover Tolpuddle, Affpuddle, Briantspuddle, Puddletown and Bere Regis, driving out from our base in Boscombe about twenty miles to the east, and Dorset Council deals with consents here. The free visit is the survey: we walk the walls with you instead of pricing from a photo.

Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. It is Thomas Hannen's firm, and he prices every wall himself. A verified customer on Checkatrade gave us 10 out of 10. Both the visit and the itemised written quote are free. Before you book a visit in Tolpuddle, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Tolpuddle 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.