Driveways in Winterborne Stickland
Drives, parking and patios in the village, priced from the dig upwards rather than from the square metre.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Last updated
A drive in Winterborne Stickland is decided by which way the ground falls and what the digger finds in the first spit, before any surface is chosen. Settle those on the site visit and the rest of it is ordinary work.
Driveway work in a village like this tends to start with loose stone, standing water or a lack of parking. Loose stone that has rutted into tracks and is creeping out onto the street every time it rains. Water running off the road or down a bank and standing at a doorway. Or a house with nowhere sensible to leave a car, where the front garden or a side space would take one if it were built to carry a vehicle, not a wheelbarrow.
So the survey starts with a hole and a look at the fall of the land, not with a brochure. We dig down to see what is under the existing surface, follow where the water goes now and where it would go once the ground is hard, and work out how a machine and a lorry get in. The written quote comes back with the excavation, the muck away, the sub-base, the edgings, the surface and the drainage each on their own line.
The work
Sloping ground, chalk and flint, and what that does to a drive
Drives that run downhill to the house. Winterborne Stickland sits in a valley and a lot of the ground tips one way or the other, so a fair number of drives deliver water straight to a back door or a garage threshold.
The fix is rarely a different surface. It is a channel drain across the head of the slope, a crossfall built into the formation so water leaves the running surface sideways, and an outfall with somewhere real to go. On anything steep we would talk you out of loose gravel and into resin bound, tarmac or block paving, because stone on a slope ends up at the bottom of it.
What comes out of the dig. Under the topsoil in Winterborne Stickland you are usually into chalk and flint. Dry, that is a decent formation and it saves you money. Wet, chalk turns to slurry the moment a machine tracks over it, and the honest answer is to dig deeper, lay a geotextile membrane and bring the depth back up in clean stone, because compacting a soft base and hoping never lasts. Flinty spoil is bulky and sharp, so disposal is priced as a grab lorry or a skip depending on where a vehicle can stand.
Gravel belongs in a village like this, but only contained: membrane, a compacted sub-base, an edge restraint against the borders and a bound apron for the first couple of metres at the entrance, with a cellular grid on a gradient. Flags go on a full mortar bed with the falls running away from the house and the finished level kept well below the damp proof course, and where a garden drops away a retaining edge and a step beat importing soil. For the patio itself, see patios in Winterborne Stickland. On the older concrete and block paving, sinking is nearly always the base, not the blocks, so we lift the affected area, correct the depth, re-compact and relay the same units, then re-sand with kiln dried sand. Where a bay is formed out of a front garden it needs a haunched edging, a build-up that will carry a car, and a way in and out that does not mean reversing blind. If a wall has to be opened, the new ends are rebuilt and capped, and Planning Portal guidance on fences, gates and garden walls covers where a boundary wall needs consent in its own right. A new crossing over the verge is a dropped kerb, and Planning Portal guidance on dropped kerbs explains how that is applied for.
How it runs
Building a drive on chalk, from test hole to handover
Thomas comes out and looks at the ground, the levels, and where the water goes now. He may dig a small test hole, because chalk that is dry is a good base and chalk that is wet is not, and what it shows changes the depth and the disposal.
The written quote then lists the dig, taking the spoil away, the sub-base, the edgings, the surface you have chosen and how the drainage will work. The dig, the build and the finish follow, with one point of contact throughout.
Access matters. A drive off a lane with room for a lorry and a skip is simple. A cottage on the street, or a house up a bank behind a flint wall, means smaller loads and more barrowing. The site is tidied each evening and kept as usable as we can. If we find an old drain, a buried slab or soft ground, you see a photograph and get a price before we deal with it.
Dorset Council is the planning authority. Records show a conservation area in Winterborne Stickland, which the council can confirm for your address, and some twenty five listed entries, the parish church among them. On a listed house the council can want listed building consent for paving against the walls. At the front, hard surfacing over five square metres needs planning permission unless it is permeable or drains to a lawn, a border or a soakaway on your land, as Planning Portal guidance on paving your front garden explains. A ground level patio at the back does not.
Cost
Chalk, banks and water: what a driveway here costs
A drive in Winterborne Stickland has no square metre rate. The ground under it decides the price more than the surface on top, and in a chalk valley the ground varies from one plot to the next.
What the ground is. Dry chalk makes a good formation. Wet or soft chalk does not, so the dig goes deeper with more sub-base. The trial hole tells us which you have.
Slopes and banks. A house above the lane on a bank may need a retaining edge, steps, or a longer drive to reach a gentle gradient. That is extra digging and extra stone.
Water. Run off from the road or from higher ground has to go somewhere. That might be a permeable surface, a channel drain across the entrance, or a soakaway. Get it wrong and the water ends up at your door.
Access. A lorry that can tip straight onto the drive is quicker and cheaper than small loads barrowed in from the lane.
The edgings. Edgings haunched in concrete hold the surface in place. Edgings bedded without haunching move under a car.
When you compare quotes, ask how deep the sub-base goes, where the water is going, and whether the edgings are haunched.
If it is urgent
Water at the doorway, or a slab that has dropped
Ring for these rather than using the form. Water off the road standing at a doorway, or a slab that has dropped on a step used in the dark, should not wait. If water is at the door, clear the nearest gully of leaves and put sandbags down if you have them.
On the first visit we make it safe and get the water moving away from the house. Thomas prices the permanent fix once the ground can be opened up. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. For urgent problems phone us, and if we cannot pick up, we ring back as soon as we can.
Worth knowing
A conservation area village, and what it changes about the front of your house
Winterborne Stickland has its own conservation area, and the part people get wrong is assuming it stops them paving anything. It does not. The permitted development test at the front is the same one that applies anywhere: keep the surface permeable, or drain it to a lawn, a border or a soakaway on your own land, and you are inside it. What the designation really controls is appearance, and it bites on trees and boundaries.
Trees are the first. Works to a tree in a conservation area need written notice to the council before anybody starts, which matters when a root plate is the reason your drive has lifted. Boundaries are the second. Taking down a front wall to make an opening is not automatically yours to do, and on a listed building it is a separate consent again.
The practical side is about materials. Flint, brick and hoggin are what the older boundaries and surfaces here are made of, so gravel, natural stone, clay pavers and a close-textured tarmac all sit comfortably against them. A large area of bright multi-coloured block paving does not, and if you ever do need permission it is the sort of thing that gets argued about.
Either way, keep the existing wall or bank if you possibly can and take the opening no wider than a car needs, because a wall you demolish is expensive to put back and never quite matches. And where a wall is opened, keep the flint and brick that comes out, because rebuilding the new ends in the same material is what stops the drive looking bolted on.
Who you are dealing with
Your driveway, priced by the owner
Measured from our base at 80a Wolverton Road, Boscombe, Winterborne Stickland is about 19.1 miles away. We lay drives and patios in the village, Winterborne Whitechurch, Turnworth, Stourpaine, Blandford Forum and the villages through the Winterborne valley, in DT11 and under Dorset Council.
The business belongs to Thomas Hannen, and he comes out, looks at the ground and prices it himself. Its full name is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Checkatrade shows a verified customer's 10 out of 10. Neither the visit nor the itemised written quote costs you anything. Before you book a visit in Winterborne Stickland, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Winterborne Stickland?
Most repairs in Winterborne Stickland 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 Winterborne Stickland |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Winterborne Stickland. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Winterborne Stickland Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Winterborne Stickland. 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 driveways in Winterborne Stickland
Will a new drive look wrong in this village?
A new drive can look wrong here, so the material is worth choosing with care. At a house, a permeable surface or one drained to your own ground is permitted development even in the Winterborne Stickland Conservation Area, unless an Article 4 direction applies, and the designation mainly controls walls, openings and trees. What tends to work here is self binding gravel or a reclaimed stone edge, with any block paving kept behind the house where it is out of public view.
Rain runs down to our back door. What fixes that?
A cut off above it, not a new surface. In Winterborne Stickland the water reaching a back door has usually come off the ground behind the house rather than off the paving, so relaying the terrace changes nothing at all. We put a linear channel or a shallow swale across the slope above the door, pipe it round to the low side, and only then reset the paving to fall away from the wall.
Can the existing blocks be lifted and reused?
Most of them: clay pavers and decent concrete blocks come up clean where they were bedded on sand, and we allow roughly one in ten for breakage and for colour loss on cut edges. What does not get reused is the bedding sand and the old base, since that is normally why the drive failed. Reusing blocks keeps the appearance the conservation area expects and cuts the delivery back to stone only.
Our house is listed. Does a patio need consent?
It can, because listed status reaches the ground within the curtilage as well as the building itself. Winterborne Stickland has 25 listed entries, and raising a level against a wall, fixing a handrail into it, or lifting old stone paving are the things needing listed building consent from Dorset Council. A new surface set away from the house on ground already disturbed is normally straightforward. We read the entry first.
What weather stops you finishing a job?
Frost in the ground and standing water in the excavation. Stone base and blocks go down perfectly well in the cold, but concrete for edgings needs protecting below roughly three degrees and resin will not cure onto a damp surface. Winterborne Stickland is far enough inland to get proper frosts, so during a hard spell we bring the digging forward and hold the surfacing back rather than laying something that fails by spring.
Nearby, and next door
Driveways near Winterborne Stickland
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Free quote
Free quote for a drive or patio in Winterborne Stickland
Ring or send a photograph and we will come out and look properly. The visit and the written itemised quote are free.