Block paving restoration in Batley

Batley made its name from shoddy: the reclaimed wool cloth that its mills turned out in huge quantities in the nineteenth century, and the reason the town grew so quickly. The mills are still part of the skyline, and the streets around them are the familiar mix of stone-built terraces, chapels and villas that went up in that boom.

What Batley does not have is flat ground. The town runs up the side of a valley, and most of its older streets climb. Block paving here is a story of slopes, trees and shade, and it is the trees we want to talk about first.

Trees, leaf litter and shade

Batley is a green town for its size, with Wilton Park, mature trees in the older gardens and more along the valley sides. Trees mean shade and a steady fall of organic matter. Leaves and seed on a block drive break down into a thin layer of compost on the surface and in the joints, and that is a better seedbed than most soil.

A drive under a tree is damp for longer than one in the open, so moss comes in fast, and algae gives it the slippery green skin that makes a drive treacherous in winter. Cleaning it is straightforward. Keeping it clean is about the joints: weeds and moss get in because there is organic matter in the joint, not because the blocks themselves grow anything.

The long path of a downpipe

A drive overhung by a gutter that overflows, or with a downpipe discharging straight onto the surface, will wear along that line. We see this on terraces in particular: one stripe of bare joints and stained blocks where roof water has run for years.

It is a small thing to fix at the source, by redirecting the discharge, and it is worth doing before the joints are refilled. Otherwise the new sand goes straight down the same channel and the stripe returns within a season.

Birstall, Healey and Staincliffe

The WF17 postcode takes in Birstall to the north-west, Healey and Staincliffe on the hillsides to the south, and Carlinghow and Mount Pleasant between them. The ages differ, the gradients differ, and so does the first question we ask: on the older streets, where is the water going; on the newer estates, how old is the sand.

Birstall in particular has seen a good deal of newer building, and the block paving there is younger and generally in better condition than the older drives closer to the centre.

What the job actually involves

We clean the drive, treat the moss and algae so it does not return at once, relay anything that has dropped, refill the joints and, if it is worth doing, seal. If sealing is not worth doing on your drive we will say so at the assessment.

Batley drives that sit in deep shade are the ones we would suggest looking at most carefully. A polymeric fill resists seed settling in, and a short annual wash-down keeps the green film from re-establishing.