A hand-cut oak porch, a flight of brick steps rising up a steep bank, and an Indian sandstone path threading between new red brick retaining walls — a pure craftsmanship job from footings to final coping.
This property sits into a bank, with a side door that was awkward to reach and a garden level well above the house. The brief was to make the whole approach work properly: a covered entrance, a proper path, and a set of steps up to the top garden.
We dug and poured footings for everything — porch, path walls and steps — then built the retaining walls in red facing brick with brick-on-edge copings, cut and pitched an oak frame on site for the porch, and finished the path and step treads in riven Indian sandstone.
It's not a big job by square metre, but it's the sort that shows exactly what a bricklaying team can do: level courses on a sloping bank, raking copings that follow the stair pitch, and an oak frame that lands square on the brick plinths.
The starting point was a grass bank running straight up against the side elevation, with a plain door and no shelter. Access to the upper garden meant walking up the slope itself.
We began with a mini excavator, taking out the bank in front of the door, digging footings for the porch posts and for the retaining walls that would carry the new path, and locating the existing services before anything was poured.
Both sides of the new path are retained in red facing brick off concrete footings, tied and drained behind so the bank can't push them out over time. Courses were run to a laser and gauged so the brick-on-edge coping lands level along the flat runs and rakes cleanly where it climbs.
The same brick and the same bond continue through the porch plinths and the step cheeks, so the whole approach reads as one piece of work rather than three separate elements.
The porch frame is green oak, cut and jointed on site rather than ordered as a kit. Posts sit on brick plinths, the tie beam and braces were assembled at low level, and the truss and rafters were pitched by hand.
It's roofed in clay plain tiles with a half-round ridge and lead work to the abutment, picking up the tile and colour of the existing house so the new porch looks like it has always been there.
The path is riven Indian sandstone in mixed sizes, laid on a full mortar bed and jointed tight, running from the side gate under the porch and out to the foot of the steps.
From there a flight of thirteen steps climbs the bank to the top garden: brick risers, sandstone treads with a small nosing, and raking brick-on-edge copings to the flanking walls that follow the pitch exactly. Getting those copings to run parallel with the treads is the detail that makes or breaks a flight like this.
The clients now have a sheltered side entrance, a proper path in and out, and a safe, generous flight of steps up to the top garden — all built in materials that suit the house.
It's a job our bricklayers and carpenters were genuinely pleased with, and it's the kind of work we'd point anyone at who wants to see what hand-cut oak and traditional brickwork look like when they're done properly.
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Before — plain side door, grass bank, no covered entrance and no proper route to the upper garden.
"Quality work as usual."
