RICS Chartered Surveyors in Keighley

Moor above, river below: the ground Keighley property stands on

The high ground west and south of the town is Millstone Grit, a thick sequence of coarse sandstones separated by beds of mudstone and shale. The sandstone lets water through and the mudstone does not, so water soaking into the moor travels down until it reaches an impermeable bed and then comes out sideways along the junction. That produces a spring line, and a great many of the older cottages above Oakworth, Haworth and Laycock were deliberately built close to one because it was the only water supply. What was an asset in 1780 is a nuisance now, and a surveyor walking the back of such a property is looking for where that flow currently goes rather than where the original builder sent it.

Down on the valley floor the picture changes completely. Airedale was scoured by ice and then filled, so beneath Keighley itself there is glacial till, sand and gravel and river alluvium over the rockhead, varying in depth across short distances. On top of that sits a century and a half of human deposit. Keighley made textile machinery as well as cloth, and a good number of the newer estates and commercial sheds stand on ground that was previously works, sidings, ash tips and mill dams. Foundations on that sort of ground meet different conditions within the footprint of a single house, and the cracking that results has its own pattern. Where the setting suggests it, the report tells your solicitor to obtain an environmental search rather than leaving the question hanging.

Water management is the recurring theme in the reports we write here. Above the town, moorland surface water arrives in volume during heavy rain, and the stone lined field drains and grips that used to carry it round buildings have often collapsed, been built over by an extension or been blocked by a new driveway. The result is water standing against a solid wall that has no damp proof course and was never meant to deal with it. Down in the valley the Worth, North Beck and the Aire itself have all put water into property at times, and where a house sits low we look for replaced floorboards, plaster renewed only to waist height, new skirtings against old walls and an insurance history worth asking the seller about.

Exposure matters more here than a buyer from a lowland town expects. The moor edge takes weather straight off the Pennines with nothing in front of it, and on an exposed cottage the western gable can be soaking while the sheltered elevation four metres away is bone dry. That is not a coincidence and it is not rising damp. The report describes the orientation, the exposure and the consequence, because the correct repair for wind driven rain on an exposed wall is nothing like the correct repair for water coming up out of the ground.

The laithe house, and what happens when the barn end becomes a sitting room

The building type that says Worth Valley and Airedale more than any other is the laithe house. It is a farmhouse and its barn built at the same moment, in the same stone, under one continuous roof, with the domestic end at one side and a cart entrance and byre at the other. They went up in numbers through the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries for families who farmed a few acres and wove at home, and dozens of them survive around Oakworth, Newsholme, Stanbury and the lanes above Haworth. East Riddlesden Hall shows the grander end of the same regional tradition in stone that is four hundred years old and still standing square.

Almost every surviving laithe house has now had the barn half converted into living accommodation, and that conversion is where the survey concentrates. A barn was a single open volume with a roof carried on a few large trusses and purlins. Inserting a first floor into it puts loads into rubble walls that were built to resist wind and carry a roof, not to support joist ends, and the notching, trimming and packing that achieves it is usually hidden by the time we arrive. What shows instead is a purlin that has taken a set, a ridge line you can see dipping from the road, a first floor that slopes towards the middle of the span, and doors upstairs that have been eased twice and still catch.

The second conversion problem is moisture. A barn wall is rubble, often nearly a metre thick, with a core of small stone and earth, no damp proof course and no foundation worth the name. It coped for two hundred years by being cold, open and ventilated at both ends. Line it internally with insulation and plasterboard, seal the floor with concrete and a membrane, fit tight modern joinery and heat it to twenty one degrees, and the moisture that used to evaporate from the inner face now condenses inside the build up where nobody can see it. The joist ends and the wall plate are in the worst position of all, buried in a wall that is now colder and wetter than it used to be. We open up where we can, use a moisture meter with judgement rather than treating its readings as gospel, and say plainly where the risk sits.

Third comes the opening. Nearly every conversion glazes the old cart arch, and a wide opening formed in a rubble wall needs a proper lintel bearing on sound masonry at each end, with padstones to spread the load. Where that was done well the wall above is stable and the reveals are straight. Where it was not, the stonework over the opening drops slightly and the crack runs up from one corner of the glazing, sometimes years after the work was finished. On a laithe house we always want to see the head of the old barn opening from both sides, and if the survey cannot establish how it is supported the report says so and recommends the structural engineer's report that will.

Defects we see most in Keighley homes

Different towns produce different reports. These are the findings that recur most often across the Worth Valley and this part of Airedale.

• Moorland surface water and spring flow arriving at the rear of hillside cottages above Oakworth and Haworth, where the original stone land drains have collapsed, been built over by an extension or been sealed by a new hard standing.
• Solid walls lined internally with insulation and plasterboard during a retrofit, so moisture now condenses behind the finish on the weather facing side instead of evaporating from it.
• Inserted first floors in converted barn ends, showing as deflected purlins, a visibly dipping ridge, sloping bedroom floors and upstairs doors that have been trimmed repeatedly.
• Cast iron gutters, hoppers and downpipes on tall three storey terraces at Ingrow and Stockbridge, undersized for the rainfall, choked at the back and discharging down the face of the wall for years.
• Corroded iron and steel beam ends in canal side mill and warehouse conversions, where the bearing is built into an external wall that has been wet since the roof last failed.
• Modern houses on former works and mill dam ground, where cracking in slabs, drives and lower courses follows the buried edge of whatever the site used to contain.
• Attic rooms formed in terraces around Braithwaite and Fell Lane with no escape window, no protected stair enclosure and no building regulation completion certificate to show for the work.
• Porous chimney stacks and failed flaunching on exposed ridge lines, driving damp into the top floor ceilings of houses that stand clear of any shelter.

Buying in Keighley: access, consents and the timing that works

Prices in this district cover an enormous range, from a modest terrace on the valley floor to a converted farmstead on the tops, and the repair liability does not scale with the price. A cottage bought cheaply because it looked characterful can carry a roof, a drainage scheme, a set of windows and a damp strategy that between them run well past what the buyer set aside. The average repair bill facing new home owners is around £5,750, and on the older end of the Keighley stock the figure the survey finds is frequently a good deal larger. Knowing it before exchange is the entire point of instructing one.

Book the inspection the day the offer is agreed, before your mortgage product is locked in and while the seller still has an interest in being helpful. We speak to the agent to arrange access ourselves, and on a property here that means asking for specific things: the loft hatch unlocked, the cellar head opened up, the outbuildings and old byre accessible, and the gate to the land at the back unbolted. On a hillside plot the rear of the building tells us far more than the frontage does, and on a laithe house the unconverted third of the structure is often where the answer is.

Consents need care in the Worth Valley. Haworth has a conservation area covering the top of Main Street and its surroundings, with a heavy concentration of listed buildings among them, and there are further conservation areas and listed farmsteads scattered up the valley and across the older core of Keighley. Where a property is listed or sits within a designated area, the report records it, and where past alterations look as though they needed listed building consent or planning permission that we can see no evidence of, we put the question to your solicitor. Unauthorised work does not get better with age and the enforcement risk passes to you with the keys.

Holiday letting is a real part of the market up the valley, driven by the Worth Valley Railway, the moorland walking and the Brontë connection at Haworth. A cottage that has been let short term for years has usually had heavy use and light maintenance, and it may carry fire safety obligations, furnishing requirements and use restrictions that a purely residential buyer is not expecting. We inspect it as a building, but we also flag the questions that follow from how it has been used.

You can talk the findings over with the surveyor as soon as the report arrives. Where a fault needs a price attached to it, movement at a converted barn end or decay in a joist buried in a wall, we will arrange the further investigation that produces one, so any renegotiation rests on a quoted figure instead of a worry.

Other surveys and valuations we carry out in Keighley

As well as Level 2 and Level 3 surveys, clients here instruct us for structural engineer's reports where a converted barn or an altered terrace is moving, timber and damp reports on rubble walled cottages and cellared valley floor property, and drone roof surveys where a steep three storey roof or a mill roof cannot be looked at safely from ground level. On the valuation side we prepare private valuations, probate valuations, matrimonial valuations, Help to Buy valuations and building insurance reinstatement figures. Owners of converted villas and canal side blocks come to us for insurance valuations and for fire risk assessments of the shared parts.

The same surveyors cover Haworth, Silsden, Steeton, Oakworth, Cross Hills and Bingley, and the villages and isolated farmsteads on the lanes between them, with travel included in the fixed fee so a remote address does not change the quote. Commercially we survey shops, workshops, mills and industrial units across the district, prepare schedules of condition before a lease is signed, advise on dilapidations at the end of a term and carry out commercial valuations and rent reviews. Every service we offer is set out on our Types of Survey page, and if what you need is not obvious from it, call and describe the property.