Chapter one
Chimney stacks on Wivelsfield's older houses
Several of the village's oldest buildings carry brick stacks of the 16th century, and the roof around a stack is where leaks usually begin.
A stack is a tall opening through the roof, and on an old house every side of it has to be sealed to the slope around it. According to the Victoria County History, the Post Office near the church has an external chimney-stack of the late 16th century, and a three-bayed brick and tiled house farther east has a stepped stack of slightly earlier type. Great Ote Hall carries three massive brick stacks of its own. Stacks of that age have lasted because people kept repairing them, so the question on a Wivelsfield survey is seldom whether the brick is old. It is whether the joints around it still keep rain out, and which of them let go first.
At a glance
- The Post Office stack dates from the late 16th century
- Great Ote Hall has three massive brick chimney-stacks
- Lead and flaunching are checked before the brickwork
1.1 Where a stack lets water in
Begin at the pot. Flaunching is the mortar cap that fixes the pot and slopes rain away from the flue, and when it cracks, water gets into the stack head. Further down sits the flashing, which is lead folded into the brick joints and stepped up both sides, with a lead gutter behind the stack on its uphill face. Where that lead has lifted or the pointing behind it has gone, rain runs down inside the brickwork and surfaces as a brown stain on a ceiling or chimney breast, often a long way from the break. We follow the mark upstream to the fault, price only that, and photograph each fault on your stack so you can check our reading of it. Our chimney repairs page covers repointing, flaunching, lead and rebuilds.
1.2 What decides the work
With stacks of this age, our first question is what the old mortar actually is, since a repair has to sit happily beside the work it meets. A stack that leans, or whose bricks flake clear through, calls for a rebuild instead of repointing. Where a stack has leaked for years, the rafters and ceiling beside it are probed for softened timber too, because slow damp stays out of sight until it has done its work. Nobody can remove a chimney breast without Building Regulations approval, and taking a chimney off a party wall means giving your neighbour notice between 2 months and a year before the start. Scaffold takes a big share of the cost on any stack that stands proud of a two-storey roof, which is part of why the national figures below range so widely between houses.
Typical UK costs for repointing a chimney stack
- Bungalow stack£200 to £700
- Semi, side stack£600 to £900
- Semi, central stack£900 to £1,500
- Stack rebuild£2,000 to £10,000+
Guide prices from elsewhere, not ours. Your own number is written up after we have surveyed, as one sum, and chimney scaffold is worth hunting for in any estimate you receive. Source: MyBuilder chimney repair price guide, updated 21/08/2026.
