Bricklaying in West Lulworth
Lime repointing, brick and stone repairs, chimneys and the boundary walls that take the weather, in West Lulworth and across the Purbeck villages.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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In West Lulworth the pointing usually fails long before the wall does. Get the joints raked out and put back in a lime mix that is softer than the stone or brick around it, and the same wall carries on doing its job. Point it in hard cement and you will be paying to cut faces out in a few winters.
Walls around West Lulworth come to grief through the weather, through frost and through ground pressure. Mortar washing out of a wall on the side that faces the weather, so the joints have gone hollow and you can see daylight through a boundary wall. Faces flaking off brick or stone, usually near the ground or near the top where water sits. Or a wall that has started to lean, which round here is normally a garden or roadside wall that has been holding back more ground than anyone designed it to.
We come and look properly, which means getting to the wall instead of judging it from the lane. We scrape a joint to find out what the original mortar actually is, tap the masonry for anything hollow behind, and photograph it so you see what we saw. Then you get a plain answer about what needs doing this year and what does not.
The work
What we take on in West Lulworth
Stone and brick walls. Much of the older village is rubble stone with brick used for the quoins, the window heads and the chimneys, and all of it was bedded in lime because lime is the sacrificial part.
We rake out by hand, take the joint back to sound mortar rather than skimming over the top of it, and point back in a natural hydraulic lime graded to suit the wall. Nothing goes near a soft wall with a disc cutter. On rubble work the joint is finished flush or just behind the face so water runs off the stone; weather struck and bucket handle joints belong on the later brickwork, not on this. The village is seven hundred metres from the sea and the most exposed elevation faces south west, so the seaward face is usually the one that has gone while the sheltered side is sound, and salt keeps a wall damp between showers rather than letting it dry.
The boundary walls. There are a great many of them here, running along the lanes, holding gardens up off the road and standing round the mill pond, and they take more weather than any house wall because they are wet on both sides with no roof over them. Coping is what saves them, so a loose or missing coping stone gets re-bedded first. Where a wall has bowed we take the leaning section down, sort the footing, which on ground that shrinks and swells is usually the real fault, and rebuild with what came out. Gate piers get rebuilt plumb rather than propped.
Where a brick face has blown, the brick comes out whole and a replacement goes in. Matching in a village like this means sourcing: a reclaimed or handmade brick, and for stone a piece that sits right for colour and texture. Where it will be seen from the road we build a sample panel first and you look at it dry, because wet mortar lies to everybody. Exposed stacks take weather from every direction, so raking and repointing above the roof line, renewing the flaunching that holds the pots and rebuilding the top courses is often what an exposed stack needs, and that is scaffold work, priced as its own line rather than added afterwards. On the newer houses at the edge of West Lulworth the walls are cavity work and the faults change: a lintel corroding over a window lifts the course above it, and wall ties rusting push the outer leaf out and crack the wall on a line every few courses.
How it runs
Brick and stone repairs from call to finished wall
Thomas comes to the wall, looks at the joints, the stone or brick, and anything that has moved, and prices it himself. One point of contact runs the job from start to end. The quote is written and itemised: access, taking down any loose work, raking out, the mortar mix, new or reclaimed brick and stone, rebuilding, and removing the waste.
Much of the older building in and around West Lulworth is stone and rubble laid in lime, and repairs should match it. We try the lime mortar mix and the joint profile on a small area first so you can see the colour before the rest goes on. Low walls come off the ground or a tower; a gable or chimney needs scaffold. The lanes are narrow, so sand, lime and stone may be dropped short and barrowed in. Each day ends with the new work covered against rain and the site swept, and spoil leaves with us. If taking down loose work uncovers a rotten lintel or a failed footing, work pauses while you get a photograph and a price.
Repairing like for like is maintenance. A listed building needs listed building consent before the mix, the joint or the brick changes. The village is in the West Lulworth Conservation Area, where taking down a front wall can need consent too, so we check with Dorset Council. Rebuilding on the line of a neighbour's wall brings in the Party Wall etc. Act 1996.
Cost
Rubble, lime and retaining walls: the costly parts
What kind of wall it is. A cottage front straight onto the lane, a retaining wall holding a garden above the road, and a detached house with a bank behind it are three different set ups. Retaining walls take the most care, because the soil behind them pushes, and the clay here shrinks and swells with the seasons, so a new footing and drainage behind the wall are often part of the price.
Stone or brick, lime or cement. Rubble stone in lime is slow to rake out by hand and slow to rebuild, and lime has to cure without drying too fast in the wind off the sea. Finding reclaimed brick or local stone that matches can take time. That is where the hours go, far more than the area.
Access. Plenty of the low work comes off a tower. How long the platform stands matters as much as its size, and the rules for working at height make it a line of its own.
What turns up. Loose facing on a rubble wall, a hollow core, or a footing washed out by water can only be judged once the loose work is down. You are told and shown before it is priced.
Ask any other firm: what mortar are you using, lime or cement, and why? Is raking out done by hand or with a grinder? Is the tower or scaffold in your figure?
If something has moved
A wall that has bulged, cracked or fallen
Ring instead of using the form. A missed call gets returned as soon as we can manage. A wall leaning over a lane, loose stone on a gable or chimney, or a section that has fallen into a garden comes first. Keep people and cars away from it.
The first visit makes it safe: loose stone or brick taken down by hand, the rest propped or fenced off, and the rubble cleared from the path. Then we look at why it went, which on a retaining wall is often water building up behind it, and price the rebuild. Booked brickwork runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Salt air decides what mortar goes back in
You are under a mile from open water here, and the wind that comes up off the Cove carries salt with it. Salt does not simply sit on a wall. It is drawn in with the rain, then as the wall dries the salt crystallises just behind the surface, and those crystals are what push the face off a brick or shell a soft stone.
It happens on the seaward elevation years before it happens on the sheltered side of the same house, which is why we price the two elevations differently instead of quoting a wall as one number. Around West Lulworth the exposed face is usually the one looking south west.
What that means in practice is that the mortar has to be the escape route. A breathable lime joint lets the water and the salts come back out through the mortar, where they do nothing worse than leave a bloom you can brush off. A hard cement mortar, or a sealant painted on to make a wall look after itself, closes that route and forces the drying out through the brick and stone instead.
That is the single most expensive mistake made on walls in this village. The other thing salt air does is eat metal, so when we are on a wall we look at what is buried in it: wall ties, the ends of lintels, old iron cramps and railing stubs. Rust expands, and expanding iron lifts courses and cracks masonry from the inside. If ties are being replaced anywhere within reach of this coast, they go back in stainless.
Who you are dealing with
Stone and brickwork across the Lulworth villages
The village is 19.4 miles from our Boscombe base, and the area we cover takes in East Lulworth, Winfrith Newburgh, Wool and the other BH20 villages, with Dorset Council for planning. Thomas Hannen stands at the wall with you, so the survey happens on site and not from photographs sent by email.
Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is the company, registered in England and Wales with the number 15471719, and it is Thomas's own business. There is a 10 out of 10 from a verified customer on Checkatrade. The site visit is free of charge, and the itemised written quote is also free. Before you book a visit in West Lulworth, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in West Lulworth?
Most repairs in West Lulworth 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 West Lulworth |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for West Lulworth. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: West Lulworth Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around West Lulworth. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | Inside the Dorset National Landscape (formerly AONB), so anything visible from outside gets more attention. |
Questions
Questions about bricklaying in West Lulworth
We are 0.7km from the sea. Does salt reach the mortar?
Salt reaches the metal in a West Lulworth wall first. At 0.7km from the coast, West Lulworth walls carry salt on the wind, and it corrodes wall ties, cramps and the fixings under copings from the edge inwards while the joint face still looks respectable. Salt also holds damp in the surface between showers, so the wall dries slowly and frost gets more attempts at it. The seaward face wants stainless fixings.
Does the conservation area cover our garden wall?
Often it does, because the West Lulworth Conservation Area controls appearance across the designated area instead of building by building, and boundary walls are a large part of why a street looks the way it does. Repairing one as it stands is maintenance. Raising it, rebuilding it in another material or changing the coping is not, and that is a conversation with Dorset Council beforehand rather than afterwards.
Which elevation goes first if we cannot do all four?
The south west facing one: in West Lulworth that is the most exposed face, and wind driven rain concentrates on the edges and the openings, so the verge, the reveals and the copings on that side empty their joints while the sheltered face stays sound. Priced elevation by elevation, you can do the weather side now and leave the rest until it genuinely needs doing.
Should the rainwater off the roof worry me?
Where it lands should. The ground under West Lulworth shrinks and swells with the seasons, so a gully that overflows or a soakaway sitting too near the house keeps wetting and drying the soil beside a footing. That movement opens joints faster than anything the weather does to the face of the wall. Sorting an overflowing gully is a small job that heads off a much bigger one.
Does the wind here stop you pointing?
Wind does more harm to fresh work than rain does. It skins a joint before the mortar has taken, and on the exposed West Lulworth elevations it drives rain straight into an open joint waiting to be filled. So the wall gets sheeted, the raked out sections are kept short, and the pointing follows the raking closely instead of a whole elevation being opened at once. In a real blow we stop.
Nearby, and next door
Bricklaying near West Lulworth
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