Block paving restoration in Bradford

Bradford grew faster than almost any other British city in the nineteenth century, on the back of wool, and it grew up the hillsides. Almost nothing in the city is flat. Streets climb the sides of the valleys that meet at the centre, and the wool merchants built their villas on the high ground in Manningham and Heaton while the mill workers lived in the terraces below.

Block paving in Bradford is as varied as the city. The big Victorian villas have forecourts and long drives; the interwar estates on the edges have shorter ones; and the newer estates on the outskirts have the usual two-car drives. What they have in common is the gradient.

Big plots, big drives

Villa drives are long and often curved, laid on a gradient to a house standing up above the road. They have retaining walls, steps and stone gateposts, and the consequence is a lot of block paving per drive, with edges against walls all the way along and drainage that has to cope with run-off from the slope above.

On these drives the edges are the first thing we check and the drainage the second. A long run of block against a wall is only as good as its weakest metre.

Keeping the blocks from creeping downhill

On a steep plot the blocks themselves can move. The slow, repeated pressure of cars braking and turning pushes the field of blocks gently downhill, and after many years a drive can have crept a little towards its lower edge, opening a gap at the top and crushing against the kerb at the bottom.

It is not a problem of loose sand, and it is not fixed by refilling. A drive on a slope needs a firm edge at the low end, and we check that before anything else. If it has gone, the field is relaid against a restraint that will hold it.

Wet hillsides, moss and the winter slip risk

A north-facing drive on a Bradford hillside gets very little winter sun. Water runs off it slowly, the surface stays damp, and algae builds into a thin, slick film. On a gradient that is more than a cosmetic matter: a green film on a slope can be treacherous underfoot and under tyres.

We treat the algae as well as washing it off, because cleaning alone gives a surface that is fine for a few months and then slick again.

From Manningham to Wibsey and Idle

The BD postcodes cover a lot of ground, from Heaton and Manningham near the centre to Idle, Eccleshill, Wibsey, Thornton and Allerton on the edges. We cover the parts of the city that fall inside our service area, which is most of it.

If your road is near the far edge of the area, ask; we would rather tell you honestly that it is too far to be sensible than take on a job we cannot do properly.