Brickwork & period restoration
Essex has thousands of Victorian and Edwardian homes with soft brick, lime mortar and decorative detail, especially in Southend, Leigh-on-Sea and Westcliff. We repair, repoint and rebuild brickwork so it lasts, and so it still looks like it belongs to the house.
Prefer to talk?
Domestic & commercial work
9.78/10 on Checkatrade
Free, no-obligation quotes
What we do
Raking out failed or cracked mortar and repointing in a mortar and joint style that suits the brick, whether lime for older homes or cement-based for modern ones.
Cutting out spalled or cracked bricks and replacing them with reclaimed or closely matched bricks.
Stitching cracks, rebuilding bulging sections and repairing lintels and window heads, with an engineer's input where needed.
New and rebuilt front walls, piers and boundary walls, including period-style walls built to match the house.
Extensions, garden walls, planters and steps in brick laid neatly to the right bond.
What to look for
Most of these problems get worse slowly, and catching them early keeps the repair smaller. If you spot any of them, send us a photo and we'll tell you whether it needs doing now or can wait.
Cracks
Fine hairline cracks are common in older walls and are often just the house settling or the mortar ageing. Wider cracks, cracks that are wider at one end than the other, or cracks that keep growing can point to movement in the foundations.
Much of south Essex is built on clay, which shrinks in dry summers and swells in wet winters, and nearby trees can make that worse. Where we think a crack is caused by movement rather than old mortar, we'll recommend a structural engineer or surveyor looks at it before we repair it, so the cause is fixed and the crack doesn't simply reopen.
Period properties
Victorian and Edwardian houses were built with lime mortar, which is softer than the bricks and lets the wall breathe. Repointing these walls with hard cement mortar traps moisture in the brick, and frost then breaks up the face of the brick instead of the joint. We check what your wall was built with and repoint to suit it.
Matching old to new
Many older Essex homes were built with imperial bricks, which are slightly larger than the metric bricks made today. Using modern bricks in an old wall can leave joints that don't line up, so where it matters we source reclaimed imperial bricks of a similar colour and texture.
Mortar colour comes mostly from the sand used. Before we repoint a whole wall, we mix samples and try them on a small area so you can see how they look once dry. We also copy the original joint style, whether flush, weathered or recessed, so the finished wall looks as though it has always been that way.
Areas we cover
We repair and rebuild brickwork across south and mid Essex. Much of our period work is in Leigh-on-Sea, Westcliff and central Southend, and we also work on older properties in Rochford, Billericay and Brentwood.
Get in touch
Send us a photo of the wall or tell us what you need, and we'll arrange a free visit.
Prefer to talk?
Call or WhatsApp Mick on:
Find Out More
Get In Touch
Call us now on 07785 933965
Serving Customers Throughout Essex
M R Construction & Carpentry is a small, family-run business based in Essex, working from Southend to Brentwood. We pride ourselves on professionalism and providing high quality building services.
