Laying driveways since 1977
Forty-five years of laying block paving, and forty-five years of being called back to look at other people’s. The second part is why we build the way we do.
Blocks go down by hand, off a string line, from a properly screeded laying course. There is no faster way that is also a good way.
Our driveway and paving experience starts in 1977. It is a family business, a father and his two sons, and between us that is more than forty-five years of laying block paving.
The useful part of that is not the number. It is that we have been around long enough to see how driveways age. We have gone back to drives we laid twenty years ago, and we have been called out to look at drives other people laid five years ago that are already failing. Over that many jobs you stop guessing about what causes what.
Almost every failed driveway we get called to has the same story underneath it. The blocks are fine. The ground was rushed.
The conversation that repeats
It goes roughly like this. Somebody rings up because their driveway has sunk. It is five, six, seven years old. They paid a fair price for it, the blocks they chose still look good, and the firm that laid it is either gone or not answering.
We lift a block at the edge of the dip and there is 60 or 70mm of sub-base where there should have been 150 or more, sitting straight on soft ground with no membrane. Sometimes there is no sub-base at all, just sand on subsoil. The drive never had a chance. It looked identical to a good one on the day it was finished, and it was always going to do this.
The frustrating part for the homeowner is that they could not have known. You cannot inspect a finished driveway. By the time the evidence exists, it is buried under the thing you paid for.
Which is the reason this website spends so much of its length on sub-base depths, compaction layers and edge restraints rather than on block colours. Not because it is interesting, but because it is the only part of a driveway quote that is worth interrogating, and almost nobody tells homeowners that.
Six things you can hold us to
- We dig a hole before we quote. Twenty minutes, and it is the difference between a quote and a guess. It tells us whether you are on gravel or clay, and what is already down there.
- The quote is itemised. Groundwork, drainage, paving and brickwork priced separately, so you can compare it properly with anyone else’s and see where the money goes.
- The specification is written down. Excavation depth, sub-base material and compacted depth, edge restraint detail, where the water goes. Ask us to, and we will.
- Surprises get raised the day we find them. With a price, before we carry on. Not at the end.
- The person who quotes it is on the job. This is not a firm where a salesman visits and a subcontractor turns up.
- We come back. Joints settle after the first rain. We return and top them up rather than leaving you to notice.
The year our driveway and paving experience begins.
Years of laying, repairing and re-laying block paving.
Five-star reviews across Google and Trustpilot.
What we can actually evidence
We would rather list four things we can prove than a page of badges.
- Which? Trusted Trader. Assessed and endorsed under the Which? scheme.
- Fully insured for the work we carry out.
- More than thirty five-star reviews across Google and Trustpilot. Go and read them rather than taking our word for it here.
- Driveway and paving experience dating back to 1977, a father and his two sons.
We do not claim accreditations we do not hold, and we do not put invented testimonials on our own website. If a review is not attributed and verifiable on a platform you can check, it is not worth much.
Why we stay local, and why we only do this
We work across Twickenham and the surrounding parts of Richmond upon Thames. Staying within that patch means we can come and look at a driveway properly before quoting, come back if something needs attention, and know the borough’s crossover requirements without having to look them up.
It also means we know the housing. The 1930s semis through Whitton have predictable frontage geometry. The Victorian terraces of St Margarets and East Twickenham are constrained by depth rather than width. The larger houses around Strawberry Hill bring mature trees and conservation areas into it. That is not something you pick up from a map.
And we only lay block paving. Not resin, not tarmac, not landscaping. It is a narrower business than it could be, and it is the reason we are good at it. Where one of the others genuinely suits your frontage better, we have written down why rather than pretending otherwise.
If you would rather see the work than read about us, our driveway paving work across Twickenham has the photographs, the process and the whole of what we offer.
Have a look at your driveway with us
We come out, measure it, open a trial hole and tell you what we think, including when we think you do not need the work doing yet. Free, and no obligation.
We normally reply within 24 hours.