New walls, rebuilds and repairs in brick and flint, from a family firm with over 35 years in the building trade.
County Structures is a small, family-run building firm in Brighton. We lay brick for extensions and garden walls, rebuild chimney stacks and repair the old brick and flint walls you see all over the city. Grant leads the work, and the firm has more than 35 years in the building trade.
We can take a job from the footings to the finished wall. If it needs a steel beam, new plaster or a structural engineer’s drawings, we sort that too.
On extensions we build cavity walls with a facing brick outside and block inside, to your architect’s drawings and the engineer’s details. Building control inspects the work as it goes up. Walls that will be rendered or clad can go up in blockwork instead.
The facing brick is the part everyone sees. We keep the courses level, the bond consistent and the joints neat, so the new wall sits well next to the old house.
A garden wall looks simple, but it needs a proper footing, a damp proof course and a coping to shed the rain. Skip any of them and a wall can start to lean or crack within a few winters. We build new walls, piers and copings, and take down and rebuild walls that have failed.
On sloping plots, a retaining wall holds back tonnes of soil. We build these with drainage behind, so water can’t build up and push the wall over. Most houses can put up a wall up to 1 metre high next to a road, or 2 metres elsewhere, without planning permission. Listed buildings and some conservation areas have tighter rules.
Chimneys take the worst of Brighton’s wind and rain. Loose bricks, cracked flaunching and missing mortar let water run down inside the stack. We repoint, part-rebuild or fully rebuild stacks, and renew the flaunching around the pots. A stack shared with next door counts as a party structure, so your neighbour may need notice under the Party Wall Act.
If a chimney is no longer used, we can take the stack down below the roofline and make good. Chimney work always needs proper scaffold, and that goes into the price.
Flint is part of Brighton’s character. It turns up in old garden walls, twittens and cottage fronts, usually laid in lime mortar with brick at the corners. Each flint is bedded in the mortar, so flint work takes a different hand from bricklaying.
We repair and rebuild flint walls in lime. Hard cement mortar holds water in, and over time it pushes the flints loose. In a conservation area, the council will expect repairs to match the original wall.
A crack running up from the corner of a window or door often means the lintel has failed. Older houses can hide timber lintels behind the brick, and these rot. Some Victorian brick arches have also dropped over the years.
We cut out the damaged brickwork, fit a new lintel and rebuild above it to match. For wider openings, we put in steel beams to an engineer’s design. Building control signs off new structural openings, and we arrange that.
A repair only works if you can’t spot it. We match the size, colour and texture of your bricks, and use reclaimed bricks when new ones won’t do. Older bricks are often imperial size, a little bigger than today’s, so we check that early.
Worn mortar is the most common problem we see. Our repointing page covers lime and cement pointing on older houses. Cracked walls may need crack stitching or new wall ties first.
We work across Brighton and Hove, including Kemptown, Hanover, Preston Park, Seven Dials, Fiveways, Withdean, Patcham, Rottingdean, Saltdean and Portslade, and out to Shoreham and Lewes. Call Grant on 07885 325954 or the office on 01273 950800.
Repointing · Structural Repairs · House Extensions · Plastering
Call Grant on 07885 325954 or the office on 01273 950800. We will come out, look at the job and give you a free, no-obligation quote.
I can confirm that Grant has worked for me on two projects. The first project was to build two semi-detached houses in Hove. The second project was to convert an 1850s listed building in Brighton into four top-end apartments.
Grant is a very practical builder and gets on well with people, particularly neighbours, helping projects run smoothly. He works to a high standard and, should you decide to have him work for you, will leave you with a feeling that you would willingly use him again.
Grant and his team carried out our flat conversion (converting the top two floors of our Victorian house to two self contained flats) last year.
For our works they started on the agreed date and finished within days of the predicted finish date. For us the work was all to a very good standard and we have been very pleased with the finished job.
The team were friendly and approachable, happy to change or add little things as the conversion evolved. Grant and John were always at the end of the phone if needed. I would not hesitate to recommend them and if I need further construction works carried out would look to them first.
Tell us a little about your project and we will call you back. If you have drawings or photos, mention it and we can arrange a site visit.
County Structures Ltd
Stanford Gate
2nd Floor, South Road
Brighton
BN1 6SB
