Stonework & Walls

A leaning wall is not a stone problem

Drive around Devon and you will see them. Garden walls with a bulge in the middle. Retaining walls tipping slowly forward. Stone that has clearly moved and is still moving.

Almost none of that is the stone failing. The stone is usually fine. What failed is behind it, and it is nearly always water.

A retaining wall does not hold back soil. It holds back soil and everything the soil is currently holding.

Where a wall stops being a garden job

The height of the retained ground matters, but so do the soil, drainage and anything loading the ground above. We assess those together rather than deciding from height alone. Walls near a road or neighbouring structures can involve additional requirements, which need checking for the particular site.

We will tell you which category your wall falls into before we price it. Where a wall genuinely needs engineering input, we arrange it rather than gloss over it. It is not the exciting answer but it is the right one, and a retaining wall failing is not the kind of thing you want to be relaxed about.

Walls, beds, steps and edges

Retaining walls to hold a bank, level a sloping garden, or turn ground you cannot currently walk on into terraces you can.

Garden and boundary walls in stone chosen to suit the house rather than the catalogue.

Raised beds built in stone, rather than timber left to rot in wet soil.

Stone steps. Cut stone on a mortared base, with every riser the same height. Steps that vary are steps people trip on, and getting them consistent across a slope is groundwork before it is stonework.

Repairs to existing stonework where the original has moved or the pointing has gone.

Pointed, or laid dry

How the joints are finished changes the whole character of a wall.

Mortared joints, struck and finished neatly, where the wall needs the strength. Or laid tight with no visible mortar at all, where the customer wants that dry laid look and the material will carry it.

Both are proper ways to build. Which one is right depends on the wall, the stone, and what you want it to look like in twenty years.

Choosing it

Some customers know exactly what they want and order it themselves. Others would rather we sourced it. Either works.

If you want an opinion we will give one. What matters is what the house is built from, whether the stone will weather to look like it belongs, and how it behaves in a wet winter.

No price list, and here is why

A wall price depends almost entirely on things you cannot see in a photograph. How much ground is being retained. What that ground is made of. Whether a machine can reach it, or whether every stone goes in by hand.

So we come and look, at no charge and with no obligation. Most jobs are quoted at a fixed price for the work listed. If an hourly rate suits the job better, we agree the rates and how materials will be charged before starting. If something unexpected means extra work, we stop and agree the work and price with you in writing before continuing.