Plastering in Brighton, from Regency bungaroosh to Hanover terraces

Plastering in Brighton, and what makes it different

Brighton is not an easy city to plaster well, and anyone who tells you otherwise has not worked on enough of it. Between the Regency squares, the steep Hanover terraces, the North Laine cottages and the endless flat conversions, almost every job here sits in a building that was put up before anyone thought about cavity walls, damp proof courses or the way modern gypsum behaves against soft historic fabric.

The single biggest thing that catches people out in Brighton is bungaroosh. It is the local wall construction used across huge numbers of Regency and early Victorian buildings in the city: flint, beach cobbles, brick rubble and whatever else was to hand, all bound together in lime mortar and poured into shuttering. It works perfectly well as long as it stays dry, and it turns to porridge if it does not. Hacking into a bungaroosh wall with the wrong tool, or sealing it up behind a dense cement render, causes real damage that is expensive to put right. James has worked on enough of these walls around Kemptown, Montpelier and the West Hill to know when to slow down and switch to lime.

Above that layer of the housing stock sit the Victorian terraces that most people actually live in. Hanover's steep streets, the tightly packed terraces off the Lewes Road, the bay-fronted houses around Preston Park and Fiveways. Here the usual jobs are re-skimming after decades of wallpaper and filler, replacing blown plaster on chimney breasts and external walls, dealing with lath and plaster ceilings that have finally let go, and making good after a rewire or a bathroom refit. It is bread and butter work, and it is where a flat finish and a tidy site matter more than anything clever.

Brighton also has an unusual amount of rented property, with two universities and a very large private rented sector. Landlords and letting agents across BN1 and BN2 tend to need work done between tenancies, on a fixed date, with the room genuinely usable at the end of it rather than three days later. James is happy to work to that kind of turnaround and will say up front whether a room can realistically be skimmed, dried and decorated inside the window you have, rather than agreeing and then letting it slip.

Damp is the other constant. A city built on chalk, sitting on the coast, with a lot of solid walls, raised pavements and Victorian rainwater goods, produces a great deal of damp that has nothing to do with rising damp at all. Before quoting a chemical damp proof course anywhere in Brighton, James takes moisture readings up the wall, looks at the external ground level and checks the gutters and downpipes. Quite often the fix is a length of guttering and better ventilation, and it is cheaper for you and more honest to say so.

Practically, working in Brighton means dealing with the city itself. Permit parking in almost every central zone, narrow terraced streets where a skip needs a licence, upper-floor flats with no lift and a communal stair that has to stay clean. All of that gets planned before the first bag of plaster arrives, because a job that starts badly on the logistics rarely recovers.

Also covered from Brighton: Rottingdean, Saltdean, Ovingdean, Withdean, Patcham. If your street sits between two of the towns listed on this site, ring and ask rather than assuming it is out of the way.