Working on Bristol's older buildings
Bristol's building stock reaches back further than most. The Georgian terraces and squares of Clifton and Kingsdown — stucco fronts, rubble-stone flanks, lath-and-plaster interiors — were built entirely with lime, as were the Victorian villas that followed across Redland, Bishopston and Montpelier. Down at the harbourside, the warehouses and industrial buildings that served the docks add a heavier kind of fabric: massive brickwork and Pennant sandstone rubble, frequently with Bath stone dressings, and just as dependent on soft, breathable mortars as any cottage.
Where these buildings suffer, the pattern is familiar. Stucco patched in cement cracks away from the lime coats beneath it. Georgian lath ceilings sag once their plaster keys are broken and are too often ripped out when they could be repaired. Pennant rubble walls pointed in strong cement shed water into the stone instead of the joint, and gypsum applied over old lime backgrounds fails wherever the wall carries moisture. Bristol's steep sites and exposed elevations make the wet-wall problem worse than owners expect, and reversing those modern interventions is a large part of what we do in the city.
What we do in Bristol
- Lime plastering — in-situ repair of Georgian and Victorian plasterwork, haired lime on lath, and full re-plastering
- Lime rendering — breathable renders and stucco repairs on rubble, brick and stone
- Lime pointing — raking out cement and repointing in mortars matched to the original
- Limecrete floors — vapour-open replacement slabs for basements and damp ground floors
- Full renovation of period and listed buildings, coordinated with conservation requirements
Listed buildings and conservation areas in Bristol
Bristol's listed stock is extensive — whole streets in Clifton and Kingsdown carry designations, alongside churches, harbourside structures and much else across the city — and its many conservation areas add a further layer of control over external work. Listed building consent from Bristol City Council is normally needed before altering historic fabric, and repair in matching lime materials is the approach conservation officers generally look for. Because we work in lime as a matter of course, our specifications tend to align with what consent conditions require rather than fighting against them.
Nearby areas we also cover
The Prince of Wales Bridge puts Bristol within comfortable daily reach of our base, and the same is true of the towns around it: Bath, Keynsham, Thornbury, Portishead, Clevedon and Nailsea, together with the older villages of South Gloucestershire and North Somerset.