What the houses are like

Olney is a Georgian market town built largely in local limestone and soft red brick, with a long High Street running down to the Market Place. Many of the frontages are listed, and a good deal more sit within the conservation area without being listed themselves. Newer housing spreads out behind the historic core.

Planning authority: Milton Keynes City Council

New oak lintel levelled into a stone opening during structural repair

Stone rather than brick

Limestone rubble and dressed stone are a different discipline to laying facing brick. The units are irregular, the bedding matters, and the mortar generally needs to be soft enough to sacrifice itself rather than the stone. Hard cement pointing on a limestone wall can do real damage over time.

We have carried out this kind of work: propping a failed stone opening, cutting in a new oak lintel and rebuilding around it so the finished doorway looks as though it has always been there. That job is in our project photographs and is a fair illustration of what careful stone repair involves.

Conservation area and listed property

Where a property is listed, listed building consent is a separate consent to planning permission and can extend to internal work that people often assume is cosmetic, such as removing a partition, altering a staircase or replacing windows. The requirements vary considerably from building to building, so the sensible route is an early conversation with the conservation team at Milton Keynes City Council before anything is committed.

We will be straightforward about this: on a heavily listed property you want a conservation accredited architect involved from the start. We are very happy to work alongside one and to build to their drawings.

Good honest and knowledgeable work. They gave a fair quote and carried out repairs to my house wall that had some subsidence cracking. The mortar and replaced bricks were all matched well. I would use them again for any other house job.

Peter TribbleGoogle review