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Practice

Areas Covered

Surveys happen at your building, so the practical limit is drive time. I work within about two hours of North Norfolk, which covers most of Norfolk, north Suffolk, the Cambridgeshire fens and south Lincolnshire.

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Where I work

I'm based in North Norfolk and keep a trading address in Norwich. The working radius runs to about two hours' drive from either.

Approximate two-hour driving radius from North Norfolk A line map of East Anglia showing the area within roughly two hours' drive of the practice in North Norfolk. It reaches Lincolnshire to the north-west, Peterborough and Cambridge to the west, and Colchester to the south. All of Norfolk and Suffolk sit well inside it. Cromer Sheringham Blakeney Wells-next-the-Sea Holt Fakenham North Walsham Aylsham King's Lynn Dereham Norwich Great Yarmouth Wymondham Peterborough Diss Bury St Edmunds Cambridge Ipswich Colchester Hunstanton Downham Market Swaffham Thetford Attleborough Beccles Lowestoft Southwold Woodbridge Stowmarket Ely Huntingdon March Framlingham Boston Sleaford Spalding Stamford Sudbury Saffron Walden Braintree Bishop's Stortford Chelmsford Practice base
Approximately two hours' drive from the practice base, measured on the road network rather than as a circle. Beyond it, ask anyway.

Two hours is the distance at which I can still arrive early, spend as long on site as the building needs, and drive back without the inspection being rushed at either end.

Norwich and the city

Norwich has more medieval building stock than most English cities and a working centre still built largely of flint, brick and pantile. The city's terraces run from red brick through the white Costessey brick that came into fashion in the early nineteenth century to the inter-war suburbs, and the older stock frequently sits on shallow foundations over soft ground, with the movement history to show for it. Conversions above shopfronts, subdivided townhouses and the Norwich-over-the-water lanes each bring their own questions.

North Norfolk and the coast

This is where I live and where the listed stock concentrates. The vernacular changes within a few miles: knapped flint and beach cobble on the coast, clay lump inland, pantile and thatch on the roofs, and lime everywhere it hasn't been replaced with cement by someone trying to help. Carrstone belongs further west, towards Hunstanton and the Wash. You will meet it on that side of the county and only occasionally on this one.

North Norfolk has a page of its own, covering the burnt and rebuilt market towns, what the flint does over a few miles, the ground parish by parish, and the two shoreline plans that govern the coast.

Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire

North Suffolk brings timber frame, render and the Waveney valley's own habits of building. The Cambridgeshire fens bring soft ground, peat shrinkage and a movement history that has to be read carefully. South Lincolnshire brings limestone. All are within reach.

Towns

  • North Norfolk: the heartland, and the towns along the coast and behind it.
  • Norwich: medieval and Georgian city fabric, and the chalk workings under it.
  • Holt: a Georgian town rebuilt after the 1708 fire, with older buildings inside the rebuild.
  • Cromer: Victorian and Edwardian seaside stock, and what the sea does to it.
  • Aylsham: a Georgian market town on ground that changes street by street.

I also cover Sheringham, Wells-next-the-Sea, Fakenham, North Walsham, Blakeney, Dereham, Wymondham, Diss, King's Lynn, Great Yarmouth, Bury St Edmunds, and the villages between them.

If your town isn't listed here, send me some brief details using the form below, or by email. If it is within the two hours, I'll give you a fixed-fee quote.

Ask about a survey

Tell me about the building and roughly where it is. I'll come back to you, usually within one working day, with a fixed fee and any questions it raises.

Hamish Cooper MRICS, Chartered Building Surveyor · Regulated by RICS · Condition and defects, not valuations