Driveways and patios in Walhampton and Portmore
Drives built for a Forest lane and a wet winter, with the ground opened up and the drainage settled before a surface is chosen.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
We build and repair drives, parking areas and patios all through Walhampton and Portmore. Every plot here sits inside the National Park, so we price the ground and the look of the finished surface together rather than sell you a surface first.
Three calls come out of this stretch more than any other. A long drive off one of the lanes between Lymington and Beaulieu that has rutted under the wheels, with the loose stone all washed down to the gate. A patio behind an old cottage that is green, uneven and sitting too high against the wall of the house. And a hardstanding that has quietly sunk where a boat trailer, a horsebox or a caravan has stood on it since last autumn.
None of those is really about the surface on top. They are about what was built underneath it and where the rain was sent. So the visit starts with a spade rather than a brochure. We open the ground up, look at what is holding the drive, walk the entrance to see where water arrives from the lane, and then tell you what the plot will actually allow. If a repair will do, we will say so.
The work
Gravel drives, Forest verges and cottage patios
Long drives to houses set back from the lane. Most properties here sit well back behind a hedge, so the drive is long, it carries a delivery lorry a few times a year, and it is the first thing anyone sees. Built thin it ruts under the wheels and hollows where you turn. Built properly it is a dig down to firm formation, a geotextile membrane so the stone cannot work its way into softer ground, then a graded sub-base laid and compacted in layers to a depth set by what we find in the hole. Self-binding hoggin, resin bound over a solid base, tarmac or permeable block paving all sit happily on that. Loose gravel does too, but only with a real edge restraint holding it, or it walks to the bottom of the slope every winter.
The bit between your gate and the road. A lot of entrances here open straight onto a wide verge that is not yours to dig, so re-grading it or laying stone across it is a highway question rather than a design choice. It matters because the verge is exactly where water off the lane arrives on your land. A channel drain or a cross drain at the entrance, taken somewhere that can legally accept it, saves more of the drive than another hundred millimetres of stone ever will. A trailer, a horsebox or a caravan parked in one spot all winter punches through a drive built only for a car, and it is the jockey wheels and corner steadies that do it rather than the tyres. The fix is a deeper build-up under that one bay, a concrete pad or a heavier sub-base, rather than rebuilding the whole thing.
26.9% of the housing here predates 1919, which means solid walls and often no damp proof course to work to, and a patio laid up against that wall sends rain straight into it. Where there is a damp proof course we finish well below it; where there is not, we build in a fall away from the house and a drainage channel along the wall. Sawn natural stone and porcelain both cope with a shaded, slow drying garden, porcelain on a full primed mortar bed, stone pointed by hand with a proper mortar rather than a brushed in compound that fails in the wet. The most exposed elevation faces south west, so it is the edges and the openings that take the driven rain rather than the middle of a surface. Steps down into a garden get built level and consistent, because an odd riser is what people trip on. Smaller jobs are worth doing on their own: a re-sand and re-level of block paving that has dropped by the garage, weed through open joints, a cracked flag at the threshold, ponding in one bay, or green staining on north facing paving. Finding which single thing has failed is what the survey is for.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
The New Forest National Park Authority is the planning authority for this address, not the district council, and the National Park Authority sets out what that means for anything visible from a lane. Paving at the front stays permitted development while the rain stays on your own land; sealed surfacing over five square metres shedding onto the road does not, and that is the front garden rule in short. A new vehicle crossing over the verge is applied for separately by the highway authority, and on lanes like these it is worth starting early, because the paving is quick and the approval is not. We are happy to speak to them before you commit to a material.
Cost
What decides the price of a driveway
What is under a drive settles the cost long before the surface does, which is why we will not give you a rate per square metre. A thatched cottage on a lane, a house set well back behind a long hedge and a modern plot in a close each need a different way in for the machine and the muck away, and everything arrives and leaves by that same route. Depth of dig, ground conditions and how much spoil goes off site are the real variables. Ask a competing quote where the water off the verge is going to end up.
If it is urgent
A trip hazard, or a drive that floods
Ring rather than use the form. A slab that has lifted, a bay that has sunk by a doorway or a gully that has stopped taking water will not wait. We make it safe and get the water moving, then price the permanent work once the ground can be opened. If stone has washed to the gate off the lane, ring while it is running, because where it runs is the evidence.
The one local thing
Inside the National Park, the finish is a planning matter
Walhampton and Portmore sit inside the New Forest National Park, and this part of the Forest is covered by its own conservation area. In plain terms, replacing a worn gravel drive with fresh gravel is maintenance and nobody minds.
Changing the material for something that reads differently from the lane, a black tarmac apron across a Forest verge or a bright resin in front of an old cottage, is a different conversation, and it is one worth having before the stone is ordered rather than after. The listed entries around here run into the nineties, concentrated on the Walhampton House estate rather than through the ordinary housing, but the appearance controls apply far more widely than the listing does.
What that changes for you is mostly the specification, not the scope. Buff and grey gravels, hoggin, riven stone and clay pavers all sit right here and none of them costs more to lay than the alternative. Permeable finishes help twice over, because they keep you inside permitted development and they keep run off out of the verge.
Take a photograph of what is there now before anything comes up, since like for like is the easiest case to make. And if you are unsure whether your plot carries anything extra, ask the Authority first. It takes a phone call, and it is a great deal cheaper than lifting a finished drive.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Walhampton, Portmore and the SO41 lanes around them, through Boldre and Pilley and down into Lymington, about sixteen miles from us. 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
Walhampton and Portmore questions we get asked
We are in the Forest South East conservation area. Does paving need consent?
The surface itself usually does not, but permitted development is trimmed back inside the National Park, so checking before ordering materials is the safe route. What the New Forest authority weighs in the Forest South East area is appearance: gravel, hoggin and reclaimed brick sit right against these buildings, while wide bands of bright block paving do not. Walls, gate piers and anything tall at the highway edge are a separate consent altogether.
Does the Solent nutrient rule affect a driveway?
It does not, and that is worth saying plainly because it holds up other work locally. Walhampton and Portmore sit in the Solent catchment, where the requirement bites on schemes creating overnight accommodation, so a new dwelling or an annexe gets caught and a drive, a terrace or a re-roof does not. If you are paving alongside a scheme that adds a bedroom, the bedroom triggers it, not the paving.
Which surface holds up on an exposed south west frontage?
One with a restrained perimeter. The most exposed elevation at Portmore faces south west, and driven rain and wind work at edges and openings rather than the middle of a surface, so it is the boundary of a drive and the joints along a wall that go first. Loose gravel migrates off the windward corner within a winter. Bound gravel, or block paving with a concrete haunch, holds a line that a loose laid kerb will not.
Who authorises work on a shared parking area?
Whoever holds the freehold, not the person whose car stands on it. Flats are 31.5% of the stock at Walhampton and Portmore, so parking and bin standings tend to be common parts run by a management company or a residents association, and one leaseholder cannot instruct the work alone. We will survey and price it in writing so a meeting has something to decide on, but the order has to come from the titleholder.
Can a lorry reach the site down these lanes?
Not always in one load. The lanes through Boldre are narrow with soft verges, and a fully loaded eight wheeler sitting on a wet verge does more damage than it saves. Where the approach is tight, materials come in on smaller loads and get staged on boards, and the dug out material leaves the same way. That adds handling, not difficulty. Thomas Hannen walks the approach first and prices what the access genuinely allows.
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A free visit in Walhampton or Portmore, and an itemised quote with the dig, the sub-base and the drainage priced on their own lines.