Bricklaying in Winfrith Newburgh
Repointing in a matched lime mix, brick and flint wall repairs and new brickwork in Winfrith Newburgh, starting with what is keeping the wall wet.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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When brickwork fails in Winfrith Newburgh it usually fails from the ground up. The Win runs through the middle of the village and a good deal of the older fabric sits low beside it, so the bottom metre of a wall stays wet long after the rest has dried, and that is where the brick faces go first.
Brickwork in Winfrith Newburgh typically fails at the base course, through trapped damp, or along a lane wall. A base course crumbling away behind a border or a path, where the wall has been wet for years and the frost has finally taken the faces off. Damp showing on the inside of a solid wall that somebody pointed in cement at some point, so the water that used to leave through the joint now leaves through the brick. Or a boundary wall along one of the lanes that has bowed, dropped its coping, or been clipped by a tractor.
We come out and survey the wall properly before anybody quotes it. That means looking at what is keeping it wet as well as at the joints, because pointing a wall that is still standing in water is money spent twice. You get told plainly whether this is a morning of work, a wall to watch for a season, or a job that needs consent before a chisel goes near it.
The work
What walls in the village tend to need
Solid walls in a matched lime mix. Much of the older village is handmade brick, often banded with flint, with a lime mortar behind it. On that fabric the joint is the sacrificial part: water goes in and comes back out through the mortar and the brick stays sound.
We rake out by hand with a chisel and a hacksaw blade rather than a disc, back to sound material, and point in a lime mix such as an NHL 3.5 knocked up to match the existing for colour, sand and strength, with a sample panel run up on your own wall so you can see it dry before an elevation is committed to. The joint goes back to the profile the wall already has, normally flush or slightly recessed. Where somebody has pointed one of these walls in sand and cement, the moisture that used to leave through the joint leaves through the face instead and the faces blow at the first hard frost. Getting it out is slow hand work and the only way to let the wall dry.
The bottom of the wall. The River Win runs through Winfrith Newburgh and it is in flood zones 2 and 3, so the base of a wall here spends longer wet than anywhere on higher ground. Where a base course has spalled we cut the dead bricks out and replace them with a reclaimed brick of the same size and bedding depth so the repair carries the same weathering as the wall around it rather than standing out. Where there is no damp proof course, and on a lot of these walls there is not, we deal with what we can control: lowering ground that has crept up above the internal floor, getting a path or a border away from the wall, and making sure rainwater is going somewhere other than the footing.
The walls along the lanes and around the churchyard take ivy, vehicles and water sitting where the coping has gone. Flint bedded in lime does not tolerate being pushed, and once a section is bowed the honest answer is usually to take it down and rebuild it off the same footing with the flint reset and the coping put back so it sheds. Stacks stand clear of everything and take weather from every side, so the joints go first and then the flaunching cracks and starts feeding water down inside; on a thatched roof the access is planned around the thatch, and that is a conversation before the quote rather than after it. For new work, whether that is a wall rebuilt from its foundation up or a lintel cut into a new opening, Planning Portal guidance on garden walls covers what you can build without planning permission, and building control inspects the structural stages.
How it runs
Brick, flint and stone repairs round the village
Thomas comes out, looks at the wall, stack or boundary close up, and checks what it is built of and what mortar holds it. The price he writes covers the platform, raking out, the mix, new or reclaimed brick and any flints to reset, rebuilding where needed, and clearing the rubble.
Walls here are often brick with flint panels, or stone, laid in lime mortar, and they are repaired in lime. Reclaimed brick is found to match. A garden wall on a lane means signs and barriers while we work, and a stack needs a scaffold that can stand on uneven ground. Rubble is bagged and taken away daily. If a section turns out worse once opened, we stop, send you pictures and a revised cost, and carry on only when you agree.
Repairing like for like on an unlisted building is maintenance. The village has a good many listed buildings and walls, from the parish church down, and on those even a change of mortar can need listed building consent from Dorset Council. The village is also in the Winfrith Newburgh Conservation Area. A new boundary wall has height limits. The ground is clay that shrinks and swells, so a crack is checked for movement before it is filled, and a new footing goes to building control.
Cost
What decides the cost of brickwork out here
We do not quote a rate per square metre. The area says little until someone has looked at what the wall is made of.
Access. A cottage tight to the village street, a farm range behind a yard a lorry can back into, and a flint wall on a lane with traffic are three different set ups. How long the scaffold or tower stands matters, and the work at height rules put it on the quote as its own item.
Flint and soft brick. Hand raking lime joints round flint is slow, and flints must be reset one by one. Soft old brick breaks if a disc is used, so it is all done by hand.
Materials to match. Reclaimed brick has to be sourced, and lime mortar mixed to match colour and strength.
Ground and water. On clay that moves, a wall with a crack may need its footing looked at, not just the joint. Rainwater dumped beside the wall makes it worse, which is why Approved Document H matters to a wall repair.
Distance. Travel from Boscombe is shown as a line.
Ask any other quote what the mix is, whether reclaimed brick is included and whether the scaffold is in the price.
If something has moved
A wall leaning into the lane or a stack losing bricks
Phone us rather than using the form. If a garden wall is leaning into the lane, a coping has shifted or bricks are dropping from a chimney stack, keep people and cars clear. Put something across the path if it faces the road, and do not try to push it back.
On the first visit we take loose masonry down to a sound course, prop or sheet the rest and make the lane safe, then price the rebuild. Planned jobs run Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. For something moving, ring, and we call back as soon as we can if nobody answers.
The one local thing
Water at the foot of the wall
The Win runs through the village and a real part of Winfrith Newburgh sits inside flood zone 3, which you can check for your own address on the government flood risk service. For brickwork that matters less because of the flooding itself and more because of what it tells you about the everyday water table.
A wall whose footing sits in wet ground never fully dries out. Salts come up through the brick, the face blows off in the first hard frost, and the joint below the damp proof course, if there even is one, washes out faster than anything higher up. If your repointing has failed in a neat band around the bottom of the house and nowhere else, that is not bad pointing. That is the ground.
So the useful order of work here is not the order most people expect. Before you price the elevation, get the water away from the wall. That means checking where every downpipe actually discharges, because a gully that has silted up or a pipe that stops in a border is putting hundreds of litres against a footing every time it rains, and Approved Document H is the standard the drainage is meant to meet.
It means taking a raised border or a built up path back down below internal floor level. It means clearing the ditch or the channel if one runs past your boundary. Do that first and the repointing you then pay for lasts. Do it afterwards and you will be cutting out the same base course again in a few winters.
Who you are dealing with
The builder repairing your walls
We are 19.8 miles away in Boscombe, and we cover Winfrith Newburgh, Wool, West Lulworth, Owermoigne, Crossways and the rest of DT2 and BH20. Dorset Council is the council for planning and building control, and the travel is a line on the quote.
You deal with Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, a business run by Thomas Hannen, who comes out to look at your wall and prices it himself. Checkatrade carries a verified customer's rating of 10 out of 10. Seeing the wall and writing you an itemised quote costs nothing. Before you book a visit in Winfrith Newburgh, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Winfrith Newburgh?
Most repairs in Winfrith Newburgh 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 Winfrith Newburgh |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Winfrith Newburgh. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Winfrith Newburgh Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Winfrith Newburgh. 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 Winfrith Newburgh
The Win runs right past us. Is that our damp?
Very likely at the base of the wall. Winfrith Newburgh sits in flood zones 2 and 3 with the River Win effectively running through it, so the water table stays high and the lowest courses spend the winter wet. Damp rises into the joint, salts travel with it, and the mortar turns back to sand from the ground upwards while everything above head height is untouched.
How do you get old mortar out without wrecking the brick?
By hand, for the most part. An angle grinder cuts a straight line and brick edges are not straight, so on the older walls around Winfrith Newburgh a disc widens the joint and takes the arrises off permanently. I use a plugging chisel and a lump hammer, cut back to roughly twice the joint width, and only reach for a power tool on hard cement in sound modern brickwork.
Is our cottage inside the Winfrith Newburgh conservation area?
The mapped boundary decides that, and Dorset Council publishes it, so it gets checked before I price rather than after. Inside the Winfrith Newburgh Conservation Area appearance is controlled, meaning a wall repaired as it was counts as maintenance while a change of material, coping or joint finish does not. Outside the line the same wall is simply a repair. It is worth knowing which side you are on.
There are 58 listed entries here. Does that affect us?
Only if yours is one of them, and with 58 entries in a village this size that is no remote chance. Winfrith House and the parish church of St Christopher are the obvious ones, but garden walls and outbuildings inside the curtilage of a listed house are covered too, which catches people out. A listing does not stop the repair. It fixes how the repair has to be done.
We are converting an outbuilding. Does the ground need anything?
Winfrith Newburgh falls in a radon affected band where basic protection is expected in new work, so a conversion or an extension gets a membrane and a sealed floor detail as a matter of course. It makes no difference to repointing or to a garden wall, which is why it only comes up when the job creates a new or newly habitable floor. Building control will want it drawn.
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Get an honest look at the wall
A free site visit, the mix and the method in writing, and the drainage checked before anyone prices the pointing.