Bricklaying and repointing in Tolpuddle
Lime repointing on brick and flint, chimney repairs, plinths and the garden walls along the street, in Tolpuddle and the Piddle valley villages.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
On most Tolpuddle walls the answer is repointing in a lime mortar, not rebuilding and not cement. The old fabric in the village was built to move a little and to dry out through its joints, so the repair that lasts is the one that leaves it able to do both.
People here ring us about three things. Joints that have gone soft and open, so the mortar comes away in your fingers and the wall has started to look hollow. A chimney stack or a gable that has lost its pointing and is now letting water into the top of the wall. Or a garden wall along the street that has begun to lean, usually where a tree has got under it or where the coping went missing years ago and nobody replaced it.
We come out and look at the whole elevation rather than the bit you noticed. That means scraping a joint to see what the original mortar really is, tapping for anything loose behind the face, checking what is holding the top of the wall dry, and photographing all of it so you can see it too. You get told what needs doing this year, what can wait, and what somebody has already done to the wall that is making it worse.
The work
The jobs we do around Tolpuddle
Repointing brick and flint. A lot of the older walling in the village is flint with brick used for the quoins, the lacing courses and the openings, and every bit of it was bedded in lime. 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 here 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 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.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
The quote is itemised by elevation: access, raking out, the mix, brick replacement and disposal on separate lines. Repairing like for like is maintenance and needs no application, and inside the Tolpuddle Conservation Area that still holds, though a change of material or appearance does not. Twenty seven entries in the parish are listed, the Martyrs' Cottages among them, and on those repointing is alteration and needs consent before a joint is opened. A new garden wall needs permission above a metre fronting the road and above two metres elsewhere, and the Planning Portal sets out where that line falls. Building on the line with a neighbour means the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 gives them a formal notice period.
Cost
What decides the price of a brickwork job
No rate per square metre: the metre of wall tells you nothing until you know what the joints are like. A cottage straight onto the street, a farmhouse with a yard you can get a mixer into and a roadside wall with traffic past it are three different jobs, and a lot of the low work comes off a tower. How long a platform stands matters as much as its size, and the work at height rules are why it is a priced line. On flint the joints are deep and irregular, so the hours come from the wall rather than its area.
If something has moved
Loose brickwork, or a wall that has shifted
Ring rather than use the form. Anything overhead or leaning goes to the front of the queue: the first visit makes it safe, and we price the permanent repair once we can see how far the movement goes. A street wall leaning over a footpath, or loose brick in a stack above thatch, we will not leave on a list. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Working inside the Tolpuddle conservation area
The village is a conservation area, and a good number of the buildings in the middle of it are listed as well. What that means for brickwork is narrower than people fear and stricter than they expect. Repairing a wall exactly as it is, in the same materials, is maintenance: no application, no fee, no delay. Changing what the wall looks like is not.
The colour of the mortar, how far the joint sits behind the face, a different brick in a patch, all of those are appearance, and on a listed building they need listed building consent before anybody starts. So does taking down a boundary wall that fronts the street, even where you fully intend to rebuild it as it was. If you are unsure which side of that line your job sits on, photograph the wall now, before anyone touches it, and let us check the address rather than guess.
The useful part is that here the rules and the fabric want the same thing. These are solid walls with no cavity, built to be breathable, and they get rid of water through the mortar joints. Cement pointing traps it and drives the drying out through the brick and flint faces instead, which is how you get spalling on a wall that was perfectly sound before someone tried to make it maintenance free.
So the lime mix that the conservation officer wants is also the mix the wall needs. In practice we do it the same way whether or not permission is involved: a sample panel, mixed and left to dry, so the colour is matched dry rather than wet, and you and the council are both looking at the real thing before the rest of the wall gets started.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Tolpuddle, Affpuddle, Briantspuddle, Puddletown and Bere Regis, out across DT2. The free site visit is the survey: we walk the elevations with you, rather than pricing a wall off a photograph. Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which you can look up in a minute. Thomas Hannen's business, and he is the one who comes out to price the job, not a salesman. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written quote are both free.
Questions
Tolpuddle questions we get asked
Martyrs' Cottage is listed. Is the rest of the row?
Several of the buildings around it are. Tolpuddle carries 27 listed entries, Martyrs' Cottage and the former Methodist chapel to the east of it among them, and the older addresses along the village are well represented. Where a building is listed, consent covers the mortar too, because the pointing counts as part of the historic fabric rather than a decoration applied over it. The list entry sets out what is included.
What does the Tolpuddle Conservation Area actually stop?
It stops change, not repair. Putting a joint back as it was is maintenance whatever the designation says. What needs asking about is a different material, a different colour of mortar, or a different profile, because those alter the street. In practice the sand is what decides the colour, so getting the sand right is most of what keeps a job inside the rules. Dorset Council can confirm the boundary if you are unsure.
Do the Poole Harbour nutrient rules reach this far?
The catchment does reach Tolpuddle, and it still leaves repairs alone. Those rules engage on schemes that add overnight accommodation, so they apply to a new dwelling or a barn converted into bedrooms, and not to a wall being repointed or rebuilt. Where our work forms part of a conversion adding bedrooms, the conversion carries the requirement and the brickwork does not. Nothing about a repair sets it off.
The road through is busy. Where do the skip and materials go?
Off the highway wherever there is a drive or a verge we are allowed to use, because a skip on the road through Tolpuddle needs a permit from Dorset Council and is better avoided. We usually cart spoil away in bags on the van instead of standing a skip for a week. Sand and lime come in as they are needed and get sheeted, since a soaked bag of sand throws the mix out.
Can a painted wall be repointed as it is?
The paint has to come off the joints first, and it is often the reason they failed. Masonry paint on an old wall seals the face, water getting in behind it cannot leave, and it works out through whatever is weakest, which is the mortar. Pointing under a coating that is still there just repeats the cycle. We strip back to bare brick over the area being worked and finish the joint to match the unpainted parts.
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Bricklaying and repointing near Tolpuddle
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