Stone & lime foundation craft · Cawdry & the Merstone vale · Since 1971
A stone wall does not fail all at once.
It fails mortar joint by joint, over two hundred polite years — and it fails faster the moment somebody points it in Portland cement, which seals the rain in instead of out. Morteford rakes the old joints to twice their width, matches the original lime by burn test, and repoints the wall the way the masons who built it would have: recessed, flexible, and breathing.
Walls dated before 1930 get lime only — that is chemistry, not preference · readings $310, credited to the work · (555) 030-4461
Rubble & fieldstone, 1780–1880
Lime-mortared rubble with a rubble core that slumps where the face joints have gone. We grout the core through injection ports before we touch the face — repointing a hollow wall is wrapping an empty box.
Triple-wythe brick, 1880–1930
Three courses deep and failing at the collar joints where the wythes were tied with iron. Stainless helical ties re-pin the layers, and the face gets a lime match flush to the original struck finish.
Early poured & block, 1930–1960
The transition decades: hard cement walls on soft lime footings. Pinning quoins, stitching the shrinkage cracks — and always sorting the movement that finished decades ago from any that has not.
Services & rates
The repoint card
From last season’s walls in Cawdry, Merstone and up the vale. The $310 reading comes off any repoint we then do, mortar typing is inside every line, and scaffold to three storeys never arrives as a surprise on the invoice.
Full lime repoint, rake & relay$34 / sq ft
Joints raked to twice their width, lime putty matched by burn test, recessed finish
Rubble-core grout injection$27 / sq ft of face
Fluid lime grout through drilled ports until the wall stops taking it
Crack stitching, helical bars$96 / lin ft
Slots cut across the run, stainless bars grouted in, lime-faced over
Quoin & lintel pinning$185 / stone
Loose stones dowelled back to sound masonry on stainless anchors
The masonry reading$310 flat
Mortar typing, moisture at the base, movement map, borescope into the core
Frost consolidation, upper courses$21 / sq ft
Eaves-level stone brought back from spalling before the winter takes the next skin
Why we will not use cement
Lime is not nostalgia. It is the specification.
A stone wall built before 1930 was designed to pass moisture — in through the face on a driving rain, out again through the same joints as the wind turns. Portland cement is stronger than the stone around it and a hundred times less permeable: point an old wall with it and the water still comes in, but now it leaves through the stone instead of the joints, spalling the face off frost after frost. The masons who built these walls knew that. We are just the ones still listening.
Twenty years on the joints
Every lime repoint carries twenty years against mortar failure — the mix was gauged for your wall, matched to your sand and cured on the wall’s calendar, not the booking sheet. Transferable once, with the mortar-typing sheet attached for whoever owns the house next.
LIME CURES ON A CALENDAR OF WEEKS · THE READING TO THE WASH-DOWN
A wall, kept properly
Day 0
The reading
Mortar sampled and typed by burn test and acid dissolution, moisture read at the base course, a borescope into the rubble core, every crack mapped with a dated gauge. You keep the sheet whether we ever return or not.
Week 1
The raking
Joints raked to twice their width by chisel and mortar pick — never a grinder, which burns the arrises off the stone and leaves a face no one can point cleanly again. Dust is caught at the sheeting and hauled, not swept into the roses.
Weeks 2–3
The laying
Lime putty and Merstone sand, matched to the original by colour and by grain, laid joint by joint in lifts as the raking depth allows — a deep joint filled in one pass traps a void the frost will find for us.
Weeks 4–6
The cure
Hessian and clean water, wetted down through hot days so carbonation completes instead of the mix drying out mid-chemistry. Nobody hurries this: a lime joint rushed is a lime joint done twice, and the second time is on us.
The wash
The signing-off
The wall brushed down, the gauge map photographed beside the day-zero sheet, the twenty-year warranty filed with the mortar typing. Old wall, new paper — that is the whole trade.
The vale, 2025 — 2026
Walls we have kept
Six walls from last season, photographed the morning the scaffold came down — lime still curing, stone already older than the photograph.
The vale says
Two keepers, one page
The previous owner pointed the whole east gable in cement out of a hardware-store tub, and the face of the stone started coming off in flakes you could read a date on. Morteford raked it all out, matched the original lime so exactly the building officer asked which sections were new, and sheeted the cure for a month through a hot August. The wall breathes again — you can see it on a cold morning, and it is beautiful.
They grouted the core of our rubble wall until it stopped drinking, then pointed the face. Two winters on, the damp course the last company wanted to inject is a subject nobody raises any more — the wall fixed itself the moment it could breathe. The reading alone was worth the fee; it dated our house closer than the deeds do.
Before you call
Fair questions
The five the shop line hears most, seven to five, vale-wide. For anything built after 1930 we will say honestly whether it is ours or a cement crew’s.
Why won’t you point my 1860s wall in cement?
Because the wall was engineered to breathe through its joints and cement is a plastic bag. Moisture that enters through the stone can no longer exit through the joints; it freezes, spalls the face, and hollows the wall from the outside in. Lime is weaker than the stone on purpose — the joint sacrifices itself over decades and is renewed for a fraction of what stone costs. Cement reverses that arithmetic, and we have taken enough of it back out to have counted.
How do you match the old mortar?
A sample is crushed and burned — the colour shift and residue identify the binder; an acid wash reads the aggregate ratio; the sand is matched from the Merstone bins by grain and hue. The candidate is troweled onto a board and cured beside the wall for two weeks, because wet lime lies about its colour and we do not quote from a lie.
Does repointing stop the damp?
Usually it removes most of it, and always for a reason you can name: the wall dries through its joints again. But damp is a water-path question — failed ground levels, a blocked gulley, a flowerbed heaped above the slate line — and the reading traces the path before the trowel is booked. When the honest fix is a spade and a gutter, the reading says so.
How long does the scaffold stay?
A full house is four to six weeks, and the last two of those are the cure, not the work — the hessian goes up and the wall is left to carbonate. The span is said up front, in writing, and the neighbours stop noticing the scaffold around day four.
Can you work through the winter?
Raking and laying stop at five degrees and falling — lime simply does not carbonate in the cold, and laying it anyway is how a wall comes back to us in spring. Readings, grouting and stitching run all year; the big repoints book April to October, and the September list fills by July.
The shop, in figures
The 2027 repoint calendar opens in March · readings within the week · (555) 030-4461 · point@mortefordstone.example
Bring us the wall
Tell us roughly when the house was built, what the joints look like and what anybody has already put into them. The $310 reading types the mortar, maps the movement and traces the water — and comes off any work that follows. point@mortefordstone.example