Flint and brick repointing in Winterborne Stickland
Beds raked back to sound lime by hand, filled in lifts, galleted with flint chips, and the brick banding pointed as its own job.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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On a Winterborne Stickland flint wall the mortar is not the joint between the units, it is the wall, so it is due for repointing as soon as the lime goes sandy, flints start to loosen, or damp shows inside. The job is raking out by hand, filling in lifts and galleting with flint chips in lime, slower work than an ordinary brick elevation. A wall that has bellied or dropped a run of flints needs rebuilding.
Wall damage in Winterborne Stickland is nearly always weather driven. A gable on the south west side where the joints have gone back and rain now stands in them. Flints that have started coming away by the handful out of a garden wall. Brick faces flaking under a cill. Or a chimney dropping sand into the gutter every time it blows hard.
Every one of those is mortar, and on the walling around Winterborne Stickland the mortar is doing more work than it does on an ordinary house. So we come and look at the wall itself before anything is priced, because no two out this way are built the same. We scrape joints in several places, find out what the original mix actually is, and photograph each face. What comes back is a written itemised quote, elevation by elevation, and we will say plainly which faces we would leave for now. Both the site visit and the quote are free.
The work
Pointing flint, banded work and the brick that ties it together
Flint rubble is laid in lime. A lot of the older walling in Winterborne Stickland is flint through the body of a solid wall with brick at the quoins and in bands running through to level it up. Because the flint contributes no bond, the joint is structure, not decoration.
We rake by hand with a chisel and a hacksaw blade until we reach sound material rather than to a set depth, damp the beds down, then fill in lifts and gallet the joints with small flint chips the way the wall was built. Neither a disc cutter nor an angle grinder goes anywhere near it: a cutter follows a straight line and flint work does not.
Start at the head of the wall. On a Winterborne Stickland wall, flints loosen from the top down, because that is where water gets in once a coping has slipped or its bedding has washed out. Pointing the face of a wall while the head of it is still open is money spent in the wrong order. Coping rebedded, top courses pointed, then the face.
Brick bands, quoins and openings. The brick running through a Winterborne Stickland flint wall was laid in a finer mortar with a narrower joint than the rubble around it, and it is what gives the wall its lines. We point it separately, usually an NHL lime or a lime putty gauged to suit, struck to the profile the brickwork already carries rather than smeared to match the flint. Losing that distinction is what makes a repaired wall look flat from the road.
Cement on soft walls, and what it does. Where Winterborne Stickland flint or soft handmade brick has been pointed in sand and cement, the wall cannot dry through the joint, so it dries through the face instead. On brick that shows as spalling. On flint it is worse: the flint is impermeable, so everything is forced through the mortar and the brick, and once the cement lets go the flints come out with it. Taking it back off is slow hand work and it is priced on hours.
Brick plinths under render. Plenty of the Winterborne Stickland cottages sit on a brick or flint plinth with something softer above, and the plinth is what keeps the wall above clear of the splash. Where one has been patched in cement the water gets trapped behind it and the brick goes to powder. Repointing a plinth wants an open, breathable mix and nothing sold as waterproof.
Stacks and flaunching. A stack out in Winterborne Stickland is exposed on four sides with a cold flue up the middle, so the joints go friable and then wash out while the walls below are still sound. Repointing above the roof line, cutting out perished brick and renewing the cracked flaunching that beds the pots is a scaffold job and a priced line of its own.
How it runs
Repointing flint and brick with the right lime mix
Thomas comes out to Winterborne Stickland and rakes a test joint or two to see how deep the old mortar has gone and what it was made of. He looks at the flint and brick, notes any spalled faces, and takes a sample so the new mix can match.
The worst joints are often on the south west side, which takes the driven rain in Winterborne Stickland. The quote breaks out the scaffold or tower, raking out, the lime and sand, how much wall each elevation has, the bricks to replace, and the clear-up.
Low walls are done from the ground. Chimneys and gables need a scaffold, and on a cottage by the lane we plan where it can stand. Joints are raked by hand on soft brick and flint, then dampened and pointed. New lime pointing is covered against frost and rain until it has gone off. Dust and old mortar are cleared daily. If a cracked brick or a failed lintel appears, you get a photograph and a price first.
A like for like repoint is repair, not development. A conservation area is recorded for the village; ask Dorset Council whether you are inside it, as a grey cement joint across flint is a visible change. The listed entries in the parish number about twenty five, the church and Quarleston Farmhouse included. On those, the mortar and joint profile are protected, and listed building consent is needed before a joint is opened. We write the mix, the sand and the profile into the quote.
Cost
Why every repointing quote here should name the mix
The size of the wall tells you little until someone has looked at the joints. Depth of the joints. Shallow, crumbly joints are quick to rake. Deep, washed-out joints on a weather-facing gable take far longer, and that is where the hours go.
Flint and brick together. A wall of flint with brick bands or quoins needs pointing done differently on each material. Flint joints are wide and irregular; brick joints are fine and even. Getting both right on one wall takes care.
The mix. Lime is right on most older walls in Winterborne Stickland. It is slower to work and slower to cure, and it needs protecting in cold weather. Matching sand and colour to the old mortar is part of the job, especially where the joints are on show.
Spalled bricks. Where old cement pointing has made brick faces blow, those bricks are cut out and replaced one at a time.
Access. A chimney or gable needs a scaffold, a boundary wall does not. Access is a separate line because the work at height rules say how that platform must be built.
Ask any other quote how deep they rake, by hand or disc, what mix they are using, and whether it has been matched.
If water is getting in
Damp coming through a wall with open joints
Phone rather than using the form. When the joints have washed out, driven rain soaks through to the inside of the wall, and on a chimney it gets behind the flashing too.
In this village the south west gable is usually the first to show it, because rain works at the corners and openings long before the middle. On the first visit we find where it is getting in, sheet it or point it temporarily, and let it dry so Thomas can see what is sound. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. Urgent work is a phone call, and if we cannot answer, a call back comes as soon as we can.
Worth knowing
A flint wall is priced by the bucket, not by the metre
On a brick elevation a rake out is fairly predictable. The joints are a consistent width, they run in straight lines, and they come back to roughly twice that width. A flint wall has none of that.
The beds are deep, irregular and full of voids where the original mortar has washed back out of sight, and you do not rake them to a depth, you rake them until you reach material that is still doing something. On one face that is a finger's depth and on another it is most of the way into the wall. It is why we survey a flint elevation with a chisel rather than a tape.
It changes how the wall goes back together too. A deep void cannot be filled in one pass, because a thick lump of lime shrinks as it dries, cracks and falls out within the year. It has to go in lifts, each one pressed in and left to take up before the next, with flint chips galleted into the joint to take up the space and hold the mortar in place. That is slow, and it is why a run of flint takes longer than the same length of brick and why the two are not priced the same. If a quote gives you one figure for a property that is half flint, nobody has measured it. Ask which faces are flint and how the joints on those are being filled.
Who you are dealing with
Who rakes and repoints your walls
From 80a Wolverton Road in Boscombe we travel about 19.1 miles to Winterborne Stickland, and we repoint there and in Winterborne Whitechurch, Turnworth, Durweston and over to Blandford Forum, all in DT11 with Dorset Council as the authority.
The company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Thomas Hannen owns it, and he rakes a test joint and prices every repoint in person. One verified customer's 10 out of 10 appears on Checkatrade. There is no fee for the visit, or for the written quote itemising each line. 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 repointing in Winterborne Stickland
Why does flint cost more to point than brick?
Because the joint is bigger, deeper and less predictable, and because it has to go back in stages. On brick you rake to a known depth and fill in one pass. On flint you rake until the mortar is sound, which varies across a single elevation, then fill in lifts so it does not shrink and drop out. The material is cheap. The hours are the cost.
What is galleting, and does our wall need it?
Galleting is bedding small flint chips into the mortar joint while it is still soft. It fills the wide gaps between irregular flints so the mortar is not left as a thick unsupported mass, and it is how these walls were built in the first place. If the sound parts of your wall have chips in the joints, the repair should have them too, or the repaired stretch will look different from the rest.
On a downland house, which face is worth spending on first?
Whichever one the weather reaches, which here is normally the south west, and then the details on the other faces that are actually letting water in: the reveals, the heads over windows, the coping and the top courses of a stack. The middle of a sheltered panel is the last part of any wall to fail and it is rarely worth spending on early.
The brick plinth under our render is crumbling. Is that a pointing job?
Usually, yes, and it is worth doing before it turns into anything else. The plinth is there to keep the softer wall above clear of splash off the ground, and once its joints have gone the water gets in behind and works upwards. It wants an open, breathable mix. What it does not want is a cement skirt or a sealer, which traps the damp and moves the damage further up the wall.
How long does a flint elevation take?
Longer than most people expect, and the honest answer comes after the survey rather than before it. A garden wall is days. A house gable in flint with brick banding through it can be a couple of weeks, because the raking is slow and each lift of mortar has to take up before the next one goes in. The quote gives you working days and says what would move them.
Nearby, and next door
Repointing near Winterborne Stickland
Nearby places we also cover for repointing, with straight-line distances from Winterborne Stickland, and the other trades we offer in Winterborne Stickland itself.
Repointing nearby
Our other trades in Winterborne Stickland
Repointing guides
Lime or cement mortar: which do you need? Reading a repointing quote: rake out Listed building consent for repointing and re-renderingEverything we do in Blandford Forum Repointing, all areas Every area we cover
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Have the flint work looked at before the coping goes
Thomas comes out, opens a joint on each face, photographs what he finds and puts the price in writing, itemised, at no cost to you.