The one piece of stonework people live with
Most of our work is outside, weathering quietly for a century. A fireplace is different: it sits in the room you use most, at eye level, lit from the side every evening. Every tooled face and every joint is on display. It is also, in most Cotswold houses, the natural heart of the room — and the thing that most often gets it wrong is a surround bought off a pallet in the wrong stone at the wrong proportions.
We cut fireplaces by hand, to suit the room they are going in.
Recent surrounds
Every one of these was cut for the room it went into, so the proportions and the detail change from job to job.
What we make
- Fireplace surrounds — jambs, lintel and mantel worked to your design in Cotswold stone or another limestone, from plain chamfered work to moulded and carved detail.
- Hearths — single-slab or jointed hearths cut to size, in stone chosen to take heat and wear.
- Lintels and bressummers — the beam across the opening, in stone or matched to an existing oak bressummer.
- Inglenook openings — opening up a blocked or reduced fireplace back to its original size, with the jambs, lintel and rough stonework made good.
- Log stores and recesses — arched or square recesses built into the chimney breast alongside the opening.
- Chimney breast stonework — facing a plastered breast in stone, or repairing existing stonework around an opening.
- Restoration of old fireplaces — cleaning centuries of soot from stone, replacing burnt or spalled pieces, and repointing in lime.
Opening up a blocked fireplace
This is one of the more satisfying jobs we do, and one of the most common in Cotswold cottages. Many original inglenooks were bricked up or reduced in the mid-twentieth century when open fires went out of fashion, then plastered over. What survives behind is often a far larger opening with a stone or oak lintel and the original jambs intact.
It is worth being clear about what this involves before you start: it is dusty, structural work. The lintel has to be supported and assessed before anything below it comes out, the flue needs checking, and what you find behind the plaster is genuinely unknown until it is open. We work carefully, prop properly, and tell you what we have found before going further — sometimes the honest answer is that the original opening was smaller than hoped.
Stone, proportion and detail
Three decisions make or break a stone fireplace:
- The stone. Cotswold limestone suits most local houses and takes hand tooling beautifully. For heavy use directly beneath a fire, we will advise where a denser stone makes a better hearth.
- The proportions. A surround that is right for a low cottage ceiling is wrong for a Victorian villa. We measure the room, not just the opening, and draw the piece to scale before cutting.
- The finish. Hand-tooled, rubbed smooth, chamfered, moulded — the surface treatment sets the character. We will show you samples of finishes on the actual stone rather than describing them.
You approve a scale drawing before any stone is cut. What you sign off is what gets built.
Stoves, hearths and safety
Most new fireplaces we build are for a wood-burning or multi-fuel stove, and the stonework has to suit the appliance rather than the other way round. Hearth dimensions, the distance from the stove to combustible material, and flue requirements are set by Building Regulations and by the stove manufacturer's own specification.
We build the stonework to those requirements — but the person who signs off the installation is your HETAS-registered installer or building control, and we would always want their figures before cutting stone. If you have not chosen a stove yet, choose it first: it determines the opening size, hearth depth and clearances.
What a stone fireplace costs
Fireplaces are priced by the piece, driven by the volume of stone, the amount of hand-working in the design, and whether structural work (opening up, lintels, propping) is involved. A plain chamfered surround in local stone is a very different job from a moulded and carved one, and opening up an inglenook adds building work on top of the masonry.
We quote in writing and itemise it, so you can see what the stone costs, what the working costs, and what the building work costs — and adjust the design if you want to.
Where we work
We build and restore stone fireplaces across Gloucestershire and the Cotswolds, including Cheltenham, Winchcombe, Tewkesbury, Gloucester, Broadway, Stow-on-the-Wold and Cirencester. Fireplaces sit alongside our wider stonemasonry and stone carving work.
Frequently asked questions
Can you open up a fireplace that has been blocked in? Usually, yes — and the original opening is often larger than expected. The lintel must be assessed and supported first, and the flue checked. We will look at it, tell you what we think is behind there, and be straight with you about what cannot be known until it is opened.
Can you match an existing stone fireplace elsewhere in the house? Yes. We record the profiles and tooling of the existing work and cut the new piece to match, in matched stone. This is common in houses where one room was modernised and the others were not.
Do you install the stove as well? No — we do the stonework and work alongside your stove installer. Choose the stove first if you can, because its hearth and clearance requirements determine the stone dimensions.
Can old sooted stone be cleaned up? Usually. Soot in porous limestone needs an appropriate method rather than a wire brush and bleach, which drives staining deeper. We test a discreet area first — the same approach as our stone cleaning work.
How long does a fireplace take? Once the design is approved, a straightforward surround is typically a few weeks from cutting to fixing, depending on the work queue. Opening up an inglenook adds time for the structural work and for the opening to dry out. We give you a realistic date with the quotation, not an optimistic one.
Can you carve initials or a date into the lintel? Yes — hand-cut lettering on a fireplace lintel is one of the nicest things you can do with a new fireplace. See stone carving.
