Plasterer in Tanworth-in-Arden

# Plasterer in Tanworth-in-Arden

Tanworth-in-Arden is a hilltop village of black-and-white cottages, Georgian brick houses and red tiled roofs, set in one of the largest rural parishes in Warwickshire. RCR Connections Ltd carries out plastering, lime work and rendering here, in the village itself and out across Wood End, Earlswood, Aspley Heath, Forshaw Heath and Danzey Green. Being Birmingham based, covering the whole of the Midlands, puts the parish well within reach, and the mix of very old and fairly new houses in Tanworth means no two jobs here are quite the same. Below we set out what the parish is built from, the problems we see most often and how we deal with them.

Free, no-obligation quote in Tanworth-in-Arden: WhatsApp me on 07453 614095 with a few photos, or send us a message.

A village on a hill in the Forest of Arden

The village stands on high ground, roughly on the 150 metre contour and about thirty metres above the fields around it, with small streams feeding the River Alne on its south and east sides. All four lanes into Tanworth climb as they approach, and each one opens out at the top into the green, the church and a main street that bends round in a horseshoe. The church spire is short but can be picked out from miles around, which is why so many walkers use it as a landmark.

The wider parish is big: around five miles from north to south and four from east to west, most of it between 450 and 500 feet above sea level. In the seventeenth century Sir William Dugdale described it as almost entirely woodland, and the hedgerows, copses and scattered oaks that remain are what is left of the old Forest of Arden. That wooded, upland character has shaped the houses. Builders used timber from the forest, clay from the fields and very little stone, and homes were spread out across clearings rather than packed together.

From a thane’s estate to Tanworth-in-Arden

The name is thought to come from an Old English phrase meaning the thane’s enclosure or estate. At the time of Domesday, Tanworth was a clearing attached to the manor of Brailes, many miles to the south. It passed to the Earls of Warwick, who used the surrounding forest as hunting ground, and stayed with them until it reverted to the Crown. In 1544 the manor was sold to Sir George Throckmorton of Coughton, and in 1604 Thomas Throckmorton sold it on to Andrew Archer of Umberslade. From then on its history was tied closely to the Umberslade estate.

The words “in-Arden” were added to help separate the village from Tamworth in Staffordshire, which is easily confused with it on paper. The parish was formally renamed Tanworth-in-Arden in 1967, although the longer name had been in everyday use for a long time before then. Today the village sits within Stratford-on-Avon District, while the postal address is Solihull, which can cause confusion when owners look for the right council to contact.

The parish has also lost and gained territory. Hockley Heath became a separate parish in 1878, and Aspley was brought in from Wootton Wawen in 1895. Those changes explain why some houses on the edges of the parish have long histories connected to other villages.

Walking the main street

Tanworth’s conservation area was designated in 1969 and its boundary was reviewed in 1994. The review counted about 85 buildings in the core of the village, forty of them dating from before 1900, with around twenty listed buildings and a further fifteen picked out as being of local interest. Walking along the street gives a good idea of what we are likely to meet inside.

The oldest homes are the timber-framed cottages of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which all face directly onto the main street. Most were built as simple homes for farmworkers and craftsmen. Their roofs were probably thatched at first and now carry red-brown clay tiles, and most of the frames are painted black and white. Half a dozen or so houses in the village still show seventeenth century timbering.

Among the cottages stand larger Georgian houses. Bank House, which takes its name from Burman’s bank founded in the late eighteenth century, and the Doctor’s House are both handsome red-orange brick houses with sash windows and a classical symmetry. Steps lead up from the pavement to their front doors, some with simple iron handrails. Aspley House near the church is a fine late Georgian manor house set behind a brick wall.

The nineteenth century added the Victorian Old Vicarage, the church school, the small terraced cottages around the green and a set of almshouses. Ridge stacks, some of them richly decorated on the school and almshouses, punctuate the roofline. A house beside the churchyard in Well Lane once served as the village workhouse.

Later housing has gone in along Bates Lane, on Doctor’s Hill and on the former Bell Field, the land inside the horseshoe behind the main street. These homes date mainly from the middle and later twentieth century and are built in brick with cavity walls, much like houses in any Warwickshire village of the time.

St Mary Magdalene and the green

The parish church closes the view at the east end of the main street, with the green and its war memorial cross in front. It is built of blue-grey lias limestone, a stone not found in the village’s houses, and consists of a chancel, a nave, a wide north aisle and a west tower with a spire. The county history suggests that the north aisle began as an early thirteenth century chapel, later enlarged into the church we see now, with the chancel rebuilt in the early fourteenth century. The walls are unusually thick for the period. The church was much altered in 1790, when the north arcade was taken out and a west gallery put in, and it was restored again in the nineteenth century. Its parish registers begin in 1558, and its peal of bells gave the Bell Inn opposite its name.

Visitors also come to the churchyard to see the grave of the musician Nick Drake, who grew up in the village, and of the motorcycle champion Mike Hailwood. Both are part of why Tanworth is better known than its size would suggest.

For homeowners, the church is a useful reminder of how the village was built. Stone was kept for the most important building, and everything else used local brick, timber and lime. Plaster and render on the houses around the green should respect that hierarchy, staying soft in tone and texture rather than competing with the stonework.

What Tanworth’s walls are made of

The local building material is red-orange brick made from the Keuper Marl clays that lie under much of the parish, along with plain clay roof tiles from the same source. There was a brickworks at Wood End, a little way to the north west of the village. The old tile roofs are steep, at around 47 to 50 degrees, while the later Welsh slate roofs are much shallower.

Stone is rare. The church and its churchyard walls are built of a blue-grey lias limestone, but apart from steps, pier caps and similar details, there is very little stone building elsewhere in the village. That leaves three main wall types:

1. Oak frames with infill panels, originally wattle and daub and in many cases later replaced with brick.
2. Solid brick walls, usually nine inches thick, in Georgian and Victorian houses and cottages.
3. Cavity brick walls in the post-war houses on Bates Lane, the Bell Field and around Earlswood and Wood End.

The conservation area review also notes that the village street is an even mix of red brick and painted fronts, some of them painted brick and some rendered. That last point is easy to miss but important for anyone planning outside work. Render and painted finishes are part of the traditional look of Tanworth, not something foreign to it.

A parish of roughcast

Look closely at the descriptions of Tanworth’s older farmhouses in the Victoria County History and the same word keeps coming up: roughcast. The county history records a number of houses where roughcast was used, either over timber framing or as a panel infill:

• Dairy House Farm, described as covered with roughcast;
• Old Grove Farm, where the timbers survive with roughcast infilling;
• Claybank Farm, a late sixteenth century house whose upper storey has square framing with roughcast panels;
• the Moat House, where a plastered front has been painted with imitation half-timbering, and which was extended in brick around 1700;
• Jerrings Hall near Earlswood, a seventeenth century house with walls faced partly in brick and partly in roughcast.

Roughcast is a lime render thrown onto the wall with a coarse aggregate, which leaves a textured, hard-wearing surface. It was affordable, it protected timber and soft brick from driving rain, and it could be limewashed to a bright, clean finish. For a parish like Tanworth, high and exposed to the weather, it made a lot of sense.

Repairing old roughcast

Old lime roughcast fails slowly. Patches come loose where water has got behind them, usually near the base of a wall, under leaking gutters or round window sills. Where the rest of the coat is sound, we cut back to firm edges, dampen the background and build up new lime in coats before casting on a finishing coat that matches the texture and aggregate of the old work. The aim is a repair that weathers in and becomes hard to spot.

Where an old roughcast coat has been patched over the years in cement, the cement areas are often the problem. Cement is much harder and less porous than lime, so water collects behind it and pushes off the softer material around it. In those cases we take off the cement patches and replace them in lime, which usually stops the cycle of failure.

Painted render on the village street

The painted and rendered frontages on the main street need regular care rather than replacement. Before repainting, it is worth having any hollow or cracked areas repaired properly, as fresh paint will only hide them for a short time. On older buildings we recommend limewash or mineral paints rather than modern acrylic masonry paint, since they let the wall dry out between spells of rain.

Modern render for later houses

On mid twentieth century and newer homes, extensions, garages and garden buildings, modern render systems are often the better choice. For these, K-Rend monocouche and silicone renders sit alongside traditional sand and cement in what we offer. A coloured monocouche gives a clean finish that does not need painting, while a silicone finish sheds water and resists the green algae that grows quickly on walls shaded by Tanworth’s many trees. How the through-coloured system behaves is set out on our K-Rend monocouche rendering page, and our rendering page for Stratford-upon-Avon covers the wider district.

Almshouses, the school and village charities

Tanworth has kept several of its Victorian institutions in use. The almshouses on Bates Lane, built in 1873, are still run as almshouses, now through the Whitehead Almshouses Housing Association, and a newer block was added in 1987. The church school is still supported by a local charity, the Tanworth Educational Foundation. Both buildings carry decorated chimney stacks and are set behind red brick boundary walls with blue brick copings, while the School House has a run of cast iron railings.

Buildings like these are often maintained by trustees or committees rather than a single owner, and work has to be planned around residents or pupils. We are used to working in occupied buildings, keeping dust contained, agreeing working hours in advance and leaving each area safe at the end of the day. Where a building is shared, we can phase the plastering room by room so that only one part is out of use at a time.

Inside the timber-framed cottages

The cottages along the main street are small, with low ceilings, exposed beams and walls that wander in and out. The county history describes Arden Cottage, for example, as having a wide fireplace in its central chimney and plastered ceilings with rough main beams. That is typical of what we find. Common jobs include:

• repairing lime plaster between exposed ceiling beams where it has cracked or come away;
• patching around timber posts and studs where old plaster has shrunk back from the frame;
• replacing failed gypsum or cement-based plaster with lime on walls that have become damp;
• re-forming wattle and daub or lath infill panels on internal partitions.

The finish has to sit neatly against old oak without smearing it. We tape and mask timbers before we start, work the plaster to a clean edge and leave a slight shadow line where the frame meets the panel, which is how most of these interiors would originally have looked. Where owners prefer the beams limewashed in with the walls, we can do that too.

In cottages that were modernised in the 1960s and 1970s, original lime plaster has often been stripped and replaced with gypsum. If that work is still sound and the walls are dry, a careful skim may be all that is needed. If it is blowing, salting or holding damp, we will recommend going back to lime.

Think twice before stripping old plaster

When an old cottage is being renovated, the first instinct is often to hack everything back to brick and start again. In Tanworth that can mean losing more than you gain. Old lime plaster is part of the building’s history, it suits the walls, and in many cases most of it is perfectly sound with only small areas failing.

Before anything comes off, we suggest:

1. tapping each wall and ceiling to map the hollow areas, which are often far smaller than they look;
2. looking for any early paint layers, stencilled decoration or graffiti, which sometimes survive under later wallpaper in houses of this age;
3. checking whether the ceiling laths are riven oak, a sign of early work worth keeping;
4. photographing the room before work starts, for your own records and for the council if the house is listed.

Keeping and repairing sound plaster is usually quicker and less disruptive than full replastering, and the room keeps the gentle, slightly uneven character that makes old Tanworth houses so appealing. Where plaster really has failed, we take off only what needs to go and feather the fresh lime into the surviving coat. On a listed house, removing historic plaster without consent can itself be a problem, so this careful approach also helps keep you on the right side of the rules.

Georgian and Victorian houses

The larger brick houses in the village, along with farmhouses such as Beaumont Hill Farm near Wood End, have taller rooms and more formal interiors. Here the work is often about preserving decoration as much as repairing walls. Typical tasks include:

• running new lengths of cornice to match surviving sections, cut from a profile taken on site;
• fixing sagging lath and plaster ceilings with screws and plaster washers, then filling and finishing;
• repairing deep window reveals where shutters, sashes or secondary glazing have been fitted;
• making good around chimney breasts where fireplaces have been opened up or blocked.

Victorian houses such as the Old Vicarage and the terraced cottages round the green have solid brick walls and lime plaster, and many have been replastered in part at some time. The main difficulty is often the junction between old and new materials, where cracks tend to open. The fix is to open the crack back to firm plaster on each side, reinforcing the joint with scrim and finishing so the wall reads as one surface.

Farms, moats and big houses across the parish

Tanworth parish is dotted with farms that began as clearings in the forest. The village was once surrounded by a dozen or so moated farmhouses in early medieval times, and sites at Codbarrow, Sidenhall and The Mount at Cheswick are still known. Many of today’s farmhouses stand on or near those old sites.

The county history picks out several houses that show the range of building in the parish:

• Forde Hall, south of the church, mostly rebuilt in brick but with an early seventeenth century timber-framed wing at one end;
• Danzey Green Farm and the farmhouses at Winterton and Warings Green, all eighteenth century brick;
• Beaumont Hill Farm, a large brick house built in two stages during the eighteenth century;
• the Danzey Green windmill, clad in weatherboarding, which now stands at the Avoncroft Museum.

North east of the village is Umberslade Hall, a large stone house with rusticated corners and balustraded parapets, built by the Archer family and later altered by G. F. Muntz in the nineteenth century. A long avenue leads towards it from the foot of Doctor’s Hill, and an obelisk put up in 1749 stands in the park. The hall is now divided into apartments.

Work on farmhouses and converted barns often means dealing with several building periods in one property. A seventeenth century frame might carry an eighteenth century brick wing and a twentieth century kitchen. We work out what each wall is made of before suggesting a material, and write down what we have used where, so future owners and surveyors have a clear record.

Earlswood, Wood End and the parish edges

The northern part of the parish looks quite different from the village. Earlswood is known for its three reservoirs, built to keep the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal topped up, which are now popular for walking, fishing and sailing. The commons of Earlswood and Shirley Heath were enclosed in 1855, and the roads and housing that followed gave the area a more scattered, suburban pattern. St Patrick’s Church at Earlswood was first built in 1840, gained its tower in 1860 and was rebuilt in red brick with stone dressings in 1899.

The North Warwickshire railway line opened through the parish in 1908, with stations at Wood End and Danzey but none in Tanworth village itself. Housing grew up around both stations and along the lanes towards Earlswood, and much of it dates from the inter-war and post-war years.

Houses in these areas are usually brick with cavity walls and gypsum plaster inside. Typical jobs are:

• skimming walls and ceilings after decorating or rewiring;
• replacing textured ceilings with a smooth finish;
• plastering new extensions, garage conversions and loft rooms;
• reboarding ceilings that have cracked or been damaged by leaks;
• rendering over tired pebbledash or painted brick.

Older cottages and smallholdings near the canal and the Earlswood reservoirs are a different matter. Many were built before damp courses were usual, on low ground where the soil stays wet for much of the year. If plaster is failing low on the walls of one of these houses, the cause is often ground moisture that has been trapped by a cement render, a concrete path or a raised flower bed. We will point that out before quoting, because replastering on its own will not stop it coming back.

If a textured coating went up before 2000, it should be tested for asbestos before anyone disturbs it. We can skim over a tested, sound coating; anything containing asbestos needs a licensed contractor first.

Weather on the hilltop

Tanworth’s height is part of its appeal, but it also means houses take the full force of wind-driven rain, especially on west and south-west facing gables. That is one reason roughcast and limewash were so common on older farmhouses. A thick lime coat soaks up rain on the surface and then lets it evaporate when the weather clears, protecting the timber and soft brick behind it.

The trouble starts when that balance is upset. A gable that has been stripped of its lime coat and left as bare brick, or sealed with cement and plastic paint, will often show damp inside within a few winters. The usual signs are:

• a damp tidemark on the inside of a gable wall, often worse after storms from the west;
• plaster that bubbles or turns powdery a metre or so above the floor;
• black mould in the corners of upstairs rooms where the ceiling meets an exposed wall;
• timber lintels and sill beams that feel soft when pressed.

Before we replaster a wall like this, we look at what is happening outside. Sometimes the answer is a new lime render or roughcast on the weather side, sometimes it is clearing a blocked gutter or lowering a flower bed that has been built up against the wall. Plastering the inside without dealing with the cause rarely lasts.

Matching the finish to the wall

Because the parish has such a range of houses, there is no single right answer for plaster or render. As a guide:

• Timber-framed cottages: lime plaster inside, lime or daub panels, and limewash or mineral paint as a finish.
• Georgian and Victorian solid brick: lime plaster inside is usually best, with roughcast or lime render outside only where the building already has it or historic evidence supports it.
• Inter-war and post-war cavity houses: gypsum plaster and skim inside; modern renders outside if the owner wants a new look.
• New extensions on old houses: plasterboard and skim inside the extension, with careful detailing where it meets the old wall, so movement between the two does not crack the finish.

We are always happy to talk through options before any work starts, and we will explain our recommendation in the written quote.

Our plastering and rendering work in Tanworth-in-Arden

• Lime plaster repairs and full replastering for listed and timber-framed houses
• Lath and plaster ceilings repaired, refixed or replaced
• Cornices and mouldings run to match existing profiles
• Gypsum skimming and plastering for later homes
• Plasterboard for extensions, stud walls and loft rooms
• Insulated boarding where it suits the wall
• Roughcast and lime render repairs
• Through-coloured monocouche, silicone or sand and cement render for newer houses and extensions
• Barn and outbuilding conversions
• Small repairs, patching and making good after other trades

Working with Stratford-on-Avon District Council

Planning in Tanworth is handled by Stratford-on-Avon District Council, even though the postal town is Solihull. The village has a conservation area and around twenty listed buildings, including the church, and a number of listed farmhouses stand in the wider parish. The countryside around the village is green belt.

The 1994 conservation area review was never formally published, but the council has treated its findings as a material consideration when deciding planning applications and appeals. It stresses the importance of boundary walls, hedges, paving and other details that might seem small, and it flags poorly chosen windows and later alterations as harmful to the village. Owners thinking about changing the outside of a house in the conservation area should keep that in mind.

In practice, we suggest:

1. checking with the council before rendering, changing render or removing historic plaster on a listed building;
2. keeping to lime and traditional finishes on older buildings unless there is a good reason not to;
3. asking about building regulations if insulation is being added as part of the work.

We can provide method statements and product details to support any discussion with the council or an architect.

Access, parking and narrow lanes

Tanworth’s charm comes partly from its tight streets. Doctor’s Hill runs right along the roadside with very narrow pavements, and the terraced cottages on the main street open straight onto the footway. That affects how we plan a job. Mixing areas need to be kept clear of the road, scaffolding may need careful siting, and materials are often carried in by hand. Let us know about parking when you get in touch, and if the job needs scaffolding we will plan its position with you.

The church, school and pub bring more traffic at certain times of day, so we try to time deliveries around school runs and busy weekends. In the outer parish, farm tracks and long drives bring their own challenges, especially in wet weather, and it helps to know in advance if there is a soft verge or a gate we need to watch.

Working premises bring their own considerations. The Bell Inn, the village shop and the garage all trade from buildings in the conservation area, and any plastering there has to fit around opening hours. We can start early, work in stages and hand rooms back clean so customers notice as little disruption as possible.

From first message to final clean

Everything begins with pictures. WhatsApp shots of the walls, ceilings or render to 07453 614095, or drop us a message using this page. Tell us roughly how old the house is and whether it is listed.

For small jobs we can often give a figure from photos. For larger or older houses, one of us comes out to see the walls in person, tap for hollow areas and see what materials are already there. You then get a written quote with the proposed method and materials.

Once dates are agreed, we arrive with dust sheets, boards and tape to protect floors and furniture. Lime work is planned around the weather, as it should not be applied in frost, and each coat needs time to firm up before the next. At the end of each day we tidy up, and when the job is finished we explain how to dry and decorate the new plaster.

Before we arrive

A little preparation saves time on the day:

• carry out smaller furniture and leave bulky pieces in the centre for us to sheet;
• unhook art, mirrors and curtains;
• arrange for sockets and switches on affected walls to be loosened;
• tell us where we can park and where we can set up a mixing area;
• mention dogs or cats, any alarm codes we will need and whether someone will be working at home.

Looking after new plaster and render

Gypsum skim on a modern wall will usually be ready for a thinned first coat of paint within a few days to a week. Lime plaster is slower and should not be dried too fast. Keep rooms ventilated, avoid blasting them with heat and be patient; the plaster will lighten as it dries. Finish lime walls with breathable paints.

New render should be protected from heavy rain and frost while it cures, and modern systems come with drying times from the maker that we follow closely. A freshly applied lime roughcast may need light misting in hot or windy weather to stop it drying too quickly. Our guide to plaster drying times has more detail on indoor finishes.

Points where the records disagree

A few facts about Tanworth vary from source to source, so we have avoided presenting them as settled:

• The date of Umberslade Hall is given as before 1741 in the Victoria County History, around 1695 in some online accounts and as early as 1680 in others.
• The conservation area review describes the church as dating from around 1330 to 1340, while the county history spreads its details across roughly half a century from the late thirteenth century.
• The review says “in-Arden” was added in the nineteenth century for postal convenience; the formal change of parish name came much later, in 1967.
• The railway through the parish is described by one source as the main Birmingham to Stratford line and by another as a branch from Henley-in-Arden to Birmingham.

For anything that affects a planning decision, the council’s listing descriptions and its own records should be your first reference.

Nearby villages we cover

We work all around Tanworth-in-Arden. Have a look at our pages for plastering in Hockley Heath, plastering in Henley-in-Arden, plastering in Lapworth, plastering in Studley, plastering in Cheswick Green, plastering in Dickens Heath and rendering in Redditch. The plastering and rendering services page lists everything we do, and areas we cover shows the full map.

Talk to RCR Connections Ltd

Across the team, RCR Connections Ltd has 62 years of combined experience in lime, gypsum and render, from cottage ceilings to whole farmhouses. A WhatsApp to 07453 614095 with some pictures is the easiest start, or use the contact page to message us, and tell us where in the parish you are. We will get back to you with the next step, whether that is a figure from your photos or a visit.

Tanworth-in-Arden homes we plaster

Tanworth-in-Arden is an old village of cottages and farmhouses, with hamlets scattered around it. Here’s where we work most, the homes you’ll find there and the plastering jobs that come up.

• Tanworth village and the green. Old cottages and houses. Lime plaster and lath ceilings.
• Earlswood. Village homes. Artex ceilings covered and kitchen extensions.
• Danzey Green. Cottages. Careful lime repairs.
• Wood End. Village houses. Rooms replastered after a rewire.
• Aspley Heath. Older homes. Ceilings and loft rooms.
• Ullenhall. Village houses and barn conversions. New stud walls plastered.
• Umberslade. Country houses. Extensions and ceilings.

Whatever the house, RCR Connections Ltd puts 62 years of combined experience into it. We’re Birmingham based, covering the whole of the Midlands, and we work Monday to Friday 7am to 5pm and Saturday 7am to 1pm. WhatsApp me on 07453 614095 or message the page with photos of the room and your road or postcode in Tanworth-in-Arden.

Outside, we also fit K-Rend monocouche and silicone render for homes around Tanworth-in-Arden, see rendering in Hollywood. Just east, we’re also the plasterer in Hockley Heath.

More services: Plastering repairs · Plastering and coving · Plastering extensions and lofts.

More from RCR Connections Ltd: All plastering and rendering services · Areas we cover