Curved Blue Brickwork, Garden Steps & Indian Sandstone Landscaping.

The site dropped steeply between the house, the garden room above it and the lower garden. Temporary timber sleepers were holding back what they could, and the change in level made the top half of the plot effectively off-limits.

Before any brick was laid we set out the levels, dug and cast foundations deep enough to take retained earth, and installed land drainage behind the wall lines so water has a route out instead of building pressure against the brickwork.

The centrepiece is the swept curved retaining wall. There is no cheating a curve in brickwork: every course is set out from a fixed centre point, each brick is cut and gauged so the perpends stay even around the arc, and the bullnose coping is laid to the same radius so the top line runs true from any angle.

We used blue engineering brick throughout — dense, low-absorption and exactly the right material where soil, water and frost meet masonry. Rolled bullnose copings finish the wall heads and the raking sections beside the steps, so the profile sweeps down the flight in one continuous line rather than stepping awkwardly.

The flight linking the garden room to the terrace is built in the same blue brick, with riven Indian sandstone treads set on a full mortar bed and a slight nose to throw water clear of the riser below.

Every riser is identical in height and every tread identical in going — the detail people never consciously notice, but the reason a flight feels right underfoot. Brick pillars with cast caps bookend the steps and carry the coped balustrade walls either side.

The main terrace runs the full width of the rear elevation and out towards the valley view, laid in riven Indian sandstone in a random rectangular pattern so no joint runs more than a couple of flags in any direction.

Everything is laid on a full wet bed with falls away from the house, jointed and pointed by hand. Side paths were taken tight around the elevations at a consistent width, with a gravel margin against the render and a clean cut edge to the retaining sleepers — practical routes, finished to the same standard as the show face.

What was an unusable bank is now three connected levels: a terrace off the house, a paved landing inside the curved wall, and safe stepped access up to the garden room.

The blue brickwork will outlast everything around it, the drainage is designed rather than hoped for, and the sandstone ties the whole scheme back to the buildings. It remains one of the jobs we point to when people ask what hand-laid brickwork actually buys you.