Block paving restoration in Horbury

Horbury has a character most of its neighbours do not. The architect John Carr, who was born here, designed its parish church, St Peter and St Leonard's, and the stone terraces around it have a formal, orderly look that is rare in a West Yorkshire town of this size. The centre is a conservation area.

Block paving is not part of that Georgian picture, and the houses around the church mostly have no drive at all. The block drives are on the roads that grew up around the centre afterwards: interwar housing, post-war estates, and the newer building towards Ossett and down to the river at Horbury Bridge.

Where the river meets the drive

The River Calder runs past the northern edge of the town, with Horbury Bridge on its bank, and Horbury Junction sits on low ground near the railway. Drives close to the river stay damp for longer. Moisture is what a block drive's joints are most sensitive to: damp joints hold organic matter, and organic matter holds moss.

On those lower streets the first job is almost always the joints. The blocks are rarely the problem; the sand has gone and the water has nowhere quick to go.

Recolouring at twenty years and more

Blocks on drives laid in the 1990s were typically a single colour, red, brindle or charcoal, and two decades of sun, rain and tyre rubber have faded most of them unevenly. Ordinary cleaning brings a great deal back. A drive that has lost its depth of colour can also be recoloured as part of a restoration, which is a bigger step than a clean and not always necessary.

We say which is which at the assessment. A clean and re-sand is the start in every case, and it is often enough on its own.

Sealing, and when it is worth it

Because Horbury's older drives are often the only block paving on a street of stone, people ask whether sealing is worth doing to protect it. Sealing locks the sand in and makes the surface easier to keep clean. It is worth most on a drive that is otherwise sound, and not worth doing at all on one with moving blocks.

There is no point sealing over a problem. We fix the bedding and the joints first, and sealing is the last step if it is wanted.

Horbury Bridge, Quarry Hill and the edges

Horbury Bridge, Horbury Junction and Quarry Hill are all within the WF4 postcode, along with the roads at the edges of the town that merge into Ossett and Wakefield. They differ in age more than in kind, and so does the order of work.

Where a drive sits next to a stone wall or an old kerb, as many in the older parts of Horbury do, the edge is the first thing we examine, because it is the first thing to fail.