Keynedon Barton is situated in Sherford on the outskirts of Kingsbridge in South Devon.

The farmhouse along with its associated buildings are Grade II* listed. Its history can be traced back to the Domseday. We have done a lot of work here over the years, this time we were asked to sort out a couple of chimney stacks on the farmhouse. One of those chimneys was the main stack, which was taken down and completely rebuilt.

If you want to know what we did on this stack you just need to click here. However whist we were carrying out the work to the main stack, the scaffolding was extended across the roof for us to gain access to a smaller chimney stack on the tenement at the rear of the farmhouse which served as a dairy.

This small brick built chimney had definitely seen much better days. The chimney pot was nowhere to be seen, the top courses of brick were missing and vegetation was growing out the top of it.

This single flue chimney was no longer used, but being a Grade II* listed building it still had to stay. So the first thing we did was to take down the loose bricks on top, which consisted of four courses, and remove all the vegetation. The brickwork was given a good spraying of herbicide to kill off any remaining micro roots that were possibly present within the brickwork.

After all the preparation work had been carried out, we put back the top four courses of brickwork, including a corbelled course which projected out from the face of the chimney by about 25mm.

All of the original bricks were re-used, but we also used some new bricks which had been made to imperial sizes that matched in pretty well.

Next a new 300mm terracotta pot was set in.

The flaunching was applied consisting of a coat of waterproof sand and cement which was trowelled to a smooth finish. The jointing to the rest of the brickwork was hacked out and re-pointed using a traditional lime mortar.

A terracotta vent cowl was fixed to the pot to allow for air flow within the flue.

The existing lead flashings were checked around the base of the stack and sealed over with lime mortar to ensure they were weather proof.

Once this was completed the scaffold came down.

All the work carried out to this chimney will keep it in a good state of repair for many years to come.