Roughcasting and Wall Coating in Fife

Fife has more harled housing per head than almost anywhere else we work, and it comes in three waves: the miners' rows through Cowdenbeath, Lochgelly and Kelty, the 1930s to 1960s semis around Dunfermline and Kirkcaldy, and Glenrothes, a new town built from 1948 where whole estates were wet-dashed at the same time and are now reaching the same age together. Then there is the East Neuk, where the wall is often a traditional lime-harled solid wall standing a few hundred metres from the North Sea.

Salt is the difference on this coast. Onshore wind carries it inland and it works into the surface, drawing in moisture and crystallising inside the render as it dries. That is what lifts a finish off a coastal wall in a way that pure rainfall never does, and it is why an East Neuk property needs a different specification from one in Dunfermline.

On the older solid-wall stock, cement is the wrong material and it is on a lot of walls. A lime-built wall needs to breathe; seal it in cement and the moisture goes up and inward instead, and you get damp inside the house and a render that eventually pushes itself off.

In the ex-mining rows and across Glenrothes we see whole terraces failing together, because they were built together. That is usually good news on price: several neighbours doing one elevation at once is a far better job than one house done in isolation.