Bricklaying · Highworth · Swindon · Cotswolds
Fair-faced brickwork, garden walls, arches, chimneys and repairs, laid by a family that's been doing it since 1988. Honest estimates in days, not weeks, and a job that still looks straight in twenty years.
40 years' experience · Free site visits · Written estimate in 3–5 working days · £5m public liability insured
Overview
Bricklaying looks simple from the pavement: put a brick down, mortar the top, place another. Anyone who has ever tried to lay a straight, plumb, watertight wall knows it isn't. Bond patterns, mortar mix, joint profile, movement joints, DPC positioning, coursing to fit an opening cleanly: every one of them is a decision that either shows off the brickwork or lets it down. Dale Smith started laying bricks straight from school in 1988, and today he lays them alongside his two sons. Bricklaying isn't a side offering for us: it's the trade we came up in.
New garden walls, boundary walls, retaining walls, house extension shells, chimney rebuilds, arch and pier work, feature brick panels, plinth courses, corbelling, brick-slip installation, and repair or replacement of damaged or spalled brickwork. We work in facing brick, engineering brick, reclaimed brick to match older properties, and Cotswold stone where the location calls for it.
Homeowners planning an extension who want the brickwork done properly the first time. Landlords and property managers with tired garden walls, spalled elevations or failing pointing. Architects and self-builders who need a reliable bricklaying team who understand rural Wiltshire and Cotswold vernacular. Neighbours who've been let down mid-project and need someone to pick the job up and finish it right.
The obvious triggers: you're building an extension, adding a garage, replacing a fallen boundary wall or installing a new chimney. The less obvious ones matter just as much, mortar joints crumbling and falling out (open pointing), bricks going frost-damaged and shedding faces (spalling), stepped cracks appearing at corners or above openings, or a wall visibly leaning after a wet winter. Left too long, small brickwork problems become structural ones.
Brickwork is one of the few parts of a home you cannot cheaply redo. Uneven perps, sloppy joint profile, wrong mortar mix for the substrate, missing movement joints or a badly bedded DPC will haunt a property for as long as it stands. Doing it right first time: with a bricklayer who's laid millions of them: is genuinely cheaper than doing it twice.
The cost of getting it wrong
Brickwork is patient. It doesn't fail overnight. But once water finds a way in, the clock starts, and it's a one-way clock.
Failed pointing lets rainwater into the wall. Wet brickwork freezes in winter, blows the face off the brick (spalling), soaks the wall cavity, dampens plaster inside, and rots any timber it touches.
Stepped cracks at a corner or above a window mean the wall is moving. Ignored, movement gets worse: lintels sag, openings distort, cavity ties corrode, and repair moves from repointing to partial rebuild.
Retaining and boundary walls fail from the base up. By the time the top course looks off-plumb, the base has usually been holding on for months. A collapse into next-door's garden or the highway is an insurance conversation you don't want.
A modern cement-heavy mortar used on old soft brick or Cotswold stone is stronger than the brick itself, so the brick fails instead of the joint. Lime or a lime-cement mix is the right answer on older walls; using the wrong mix accelerates decay.
Common mistake, The most common mistakes we're called in to fix: rendering over failing brickwork instead of repairing it, using cement mortar on lime-built walls, laying bricks without a proper DPC, and skipping movement joints on long runs: all cheap-looking savings that cost thousands to unpick later.
Our process
The same four-step process on every job, from a single brick repair to a two-storey extension.
You ring or email. We answer enquiries within one working day and book a free site visit at a time that suits you: evenings and Saturdays included.
Dale walks the job with you, checks the substrate, confirms brick and mortar choices, and talks through what's realistic. You'll get a straight opinion, not a sales pitch.
You get a clear, itemised written estimate. Materials, labour and timing are broken out so you can see exactly what you're paying for and when.
Once you're happy, we book you in, arrive when we say we will, and work in staged payments, you never pay upfront. On completion we walk the finished work with you and don't leave until you're satisfied.
The benefits
Line, level and gauge on every course. If it isn't right, it comes down.
Cement, cement-lime or straight lime: matched to the brick and the age of the building, not to what was in the mixer.
Correct DPC positioning, weep vents where they belong, movement joints on long runs. Water goes where it's supposed to go: outside.
Working across Cotswold villages and Wiltshire market towns, we source bricks and stone that sit properly against the existing property: no glaring patch.
The same three people from footings to final ridge tile. No new face on your driveway every week.
One estimate, staged payments, and the only time we go over is if you change what you originally asked for.
In detail
A quick reference for homeowners weighing up a bricklaying job. If you'd rather just talk it through, give us a ring: Dale answers the phone.
Facing bricks (wire-cut, stock, waterstruck), engineering bricks for below-DPC and retaining work, reclaimed bricks matched to Victorian and Edwardian properties across Swindon and the market towns, and specials: plinth headers, bullnose, angle and cill bricks for detailing that reads properly. On rural Cotswold properties we mix in natural stone walling where the vernacular calls for it.
Cement-lime-sand mixes (typically 1:1:6 or 1:2:9) for most modern brickwork, natural hydraulic lime (NHL 3.5) for older soft-brick and stone walls where breathability matters, and coloured mortars matched on request. Joint profiles handled to spec: struck weathered on exposed elevations, bucket-handle for a tidy modern finish, flush and recessed on request. Repointing is done by carefully raking out failed mortar to a proper depth: never overlaid.
Stretcher bond on cavity walls, English and Flemish bond on solid and feature walls, header bond for curved and decorative work, soldier and stack bonds for lintels, cills and feature panels. Rubbed and gauged arches, corbelled chimneys and brick-on-edge coping all part of the standard toolbox.
New-build extension shells, garden and boundary walls up to 1.8m without piers (higher with proper piers and foundations), retaining walls with correct weep provision, brick-slip installation on steel-frame extensions, chimney rebuilds and repointing above the roof line, single-brick and multi-brick spalling repairs, tie replacement on cavity walls that have blown, and repointing failing older elevations across the Cotswolds.
Our work is primarily residential: homeowners, self-builders, landlords and architect-led projects. We take on light commercial where it's a fit (small extensions, retaining walls, external planters and boundary walls on schools and offices) but we don't chase large industrial contracts. That keeps us on the tools rather than in a portacabin.
Recent works
It depends entirely on the job: a small garden wall is very different to a full extension shell. What we can promise is a free site visit and a written, itemised estimate in 3–5 working days so you know exactly where you stand before committing.
A boundary wall of 5–8 metres is usually a few days. A single-storey extension shell runs one to three weeks depending on complexity and weather. Dale will give you a realistic timescale at the site visit: not an optimistic one.
Yes. Matching brick colour, size, texture and mortar joint is a big part of getting a repair or extension to look right. We source reclaimed and matching new bricks and mix mortars to suit the age of the property.
Yes: £5,000,000 public liability and £10,000,000 employers' liability. Full details available on request before we start work.
No. We work in staged payments, nothing is due before work begins. Payment is by bank transfer or cash; we don't take card payments.
We're committed to completing every job to the highest standard. If an issue arises with our workmanship, we'll return to put it right within a reasonable timeframe at no extra cost: that covers workmanship, not client-side changes made after works commenced.
Yes: Highworth, Swindon, Lechlade, Fairford, Cirencester, Faringdon, Witney, Burford and Shrivenham are our regular patch.
We'll always try. Ring Dale on 07926 334368: if we can get out same or next day we will, and if we can't we'll be honest about it and point you to someone who can.
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Free site visit at a time that suits. Written, itemised estimate in 3–5 working days. Staged payments, nothing due before we start.
