Counted at the benches
The yard ledger, first
Services & rates
The rates — graded work
Quoted off the survey and held sixty days. Grading, lime, anchors, scaffolding and cleanup are inside the number — the only extra is stone we must quarry to match, quoted per ton before you approve a single course.
Lime repointing, per square foot$17–$23
hand-raked · NHL 3.5 in the field, NHL 5 at copings
Wall rebuild from graded stock$38/sq ft
numbered, dismantled, re-laid in original order
Anchored veneer$34/sq ft
316 stainless Z-anchors at 16 in o.c. · flashed and wept
Arch rebuild on centeringfrom $1,900
voussoirs cut at the benches, numbered · keystone last
Hearth in graded firebrickfrom $2,500
moderate- or high-duty to the drawing · cast crown
The grading method
Bench, chip, lay, record
Four movements, the same on every wall the yard touches — the bench decides the stone, the chip decides the lime, and the record decides the argument, should there ever be one.
The survey & the chip
A mortar chip leaves the wall and is matched; the wall’s age picks the lime. The survey also grades the wall itself — what was laid in what, and in which order it should come out.
Grade at the benches
Stone is sorted to walling, flooring and roofing splits on the yard benches, weighed and logged — a course laid in the wrong grade is a wall wearing somebody else’s clothes.
Lay from the record
Rebuilds are dismantled numbered and re-laid in original order from graded stock; joints flushed in two passes and struck to the profile the wall was born with.
Record & warrant
The graded weights, lime batches and joint counts go in the yard book with your name on them — then the thirty-year warranty, transferable with the house.
Recent work
The wall book
Six walls from the quarry towns — graded rebuilds, repoints and one arch whose voussoirs were cut at the benches in a single afternoon. Every owner will let you count courses; we would rather you did.
The benches run all year; the pointing runs April to October — lime carbonates against the calendar, not the thermostat. Grading visits and surveys happen in any month, and winter is when the yard stock grows.
What grading buys you
A quarry wall fails from the inside: stone laid flat-bedded where a wall wants it on edge, flooring splits in a garden wall, roofing thickness in a course. Grading is the unglamorous discipline that decides which of those walls yours will be — and it costs nothing but the bench it happens on.
Thirty years, bench to strike
If a graded course fails, a joint we pointed lets go, or an anchor we set moves inside thirty years, we return and correct it free — the yard book names the bench, the batch and the date, which is why the promise can be this plain.
Two crews had already rebuilt our terrace wall twice with stone that looked right and behaved wrong. The Scantle Yard weighed the old wall, graded the new stock on a bench in front of me, and laid it to a numbered record. It has been through five winters without a course stirring — the difference, it turns out, was never the mason’s hands. It was the sorting.
Stone, lime, order
Asked at the benches
The questions the quarry towns ask first, answered the way we answer them with the yard book open.
What is scantle, and why name a yard after it?
Scantling is the grading of stone by thickness and use — walling, flooring, roofing splits kept apart so each course behaves the way its bed expects. A wall laid in the wrong grade looks right for a season and then works itself loose, quietly, for a decade. The benches are the trade’s conscience, so they got the name on the gate.
Lime or portland on my wall?
Lime, on anything built before 1930. Lime is softer than the brick and stone around it, and sacrificial — it weathers out so the masonry doesn’t have to. Portland is stronger than old masonry, so the freeze-thaw cycle breaks the wall units to save the mortar, which is exactly backwards.
Can you match stone from the Scar?
From the yard’s own benches first — fifty-six years of graded stock — and from two working quarries beyond that. The match is laid out dry beside your wall, wetted, and approved by you in daylight before a single piece is bedded.
Why does a rebuild get numbered?
Because the original masons solved problems we cannot see — a batter here, a through-stone there. Numbering and re-laying in original order keeps their solutions in the wall; a rebuild that merely looks like the old wall throws them away and waits for the frost to object.
They dismantled our wall into numbered piles on the lawn, graded the replacements on a bench, and laid it back over three weeks. The surveyor asked which sections were new. None of them, said the mason, and he was being precise, not modest.
The yard book weighs everything, so when I asked whether the arch stones were new or original, they read me the bench weights from before and after. Same stones, re-cut beds, one new keystone. That level of record changes how you argue with a builder.
Every other bid said “repoint and make good”. The Scantle Yard said “rake by hand, point in NHL 3.5, NHL 5 at the copings, and here is the joint count”. The count was right to within four joints, and the four were mine to find.
Thirty years on the graded course
If a course we laid from graded stock fails, or a joint we pointed lets go inside thirty years, we return and correct it free. The bench decides the stone; the yard book decides the argument.
yard@scantle.example · Pennant Scar · benches run year-round
Weigh the wall first.
Send the year, the town and a photo — the survey brings the chip kit, the grading verdict and a written square-foot number inside the week. Winter is when the benches are quietest and the yard stock grows.