Red — exclusion
No entry, full stop, while the structure is being worked. The drop zone and anything a collapse could reach. Only the machine inside it, never a person.
Demolition · Reclamation · Brick — Stoke-on-Trent
We take buildings down. The best of them goes back up.
Stackworth is a demolition and reclamation yard in Stoke-on-Trent. We take structures down the methodical way, clean and grade what deserves a second life, and lay reclaimed brick back into new work.
What needs to come down?
Honest bands, both directions — what the take-down costs, and what the structure gives back as reclaimed material. No email to see a number; no number is firm until we've walked the site.
- Taking it down
- £9,250–£13,750
- Bricks in the structure
- 10,000–14,000
- Likely to clean back (55–80%)
- 5,500–11,250
- Reclamation credit
- −£1,550–£6,200
- Likely net
- £3,050–£12,200
Lime mortar lets go — most bricks clean by hand back to saleable stock.
Bands from a demonstration rate card on a fictional contractor — never a quote. On a real job the number is fixed by a walk-round and a written RAMS, not a form. Asbestos surveys, permits and disposal are priced from what the walk-round actually finds.
One material, twice built
Demolition feeds the yard. The yard feeds the wall.
Three trades under one gate, in the only order that closes the loop — what comes down is graded, and what is graded gets laid back up.
Stage 01
Take it down
Top-down, to the written method: surveyed, stripped, reduced floor by floor with the zones briefed and the arisings cleared as they land.
Stage 02
Grade what survives
Brick cleaned by hand off lime mortar, slate and oak stacked by size, steel weighed out — every stream leaves on a waste transfer note.
Stage 03
Lay it back up
Our bricklayers work the reclaimed stock into new jobs — garden walls, extensions, repairs that have to match a hundred-year-old face.
The loop closes: brick reclaimed at stage one is cleaned and graded at stage two, and laid back into new work at stage three — one material, twice built.
How a structure comes down
The method is the same on every job — because that is what safe looks like
No shortcut produces a quicker quote. The order below is how the trade's own code of practice says it is done, and it is the order we price by.
- 01
Walk the site
A pre-demolition survey on foot: the structure, what it touches, what the neighbours need protecting from, and what in it deserves a second life.
Free, and it obliges you to nothing
- 02
Asbestos first — always
A refurbishment & demolition asbestos survey by a qualified surveyor before anything else is planned. If suspect material turns up mid-job, work stops and the area clears. No survey, no start.
The trade's hard law
- 03
The RAMS is written
The risk assessment and method statement is agreed in writing before work begins — the sequence, the plant, the exclusion zones, the disposal routes. It is the document any real job answers to.
In writing, before a single strike
- 04
Services proven dead
Gas, power, water and comms are disconnected and PROVEN dead — never assumed. The check is recorded before the strip starts.
Checked, not assumed
- 05
Soft strip, then top down
Fittings and non-structural material come out first. Then the structure is reduced from the top, progressively, arisings cleared as they land — a stripped floor is never loaded, and nothing is undercut.
Never undercut
- 06
Weigh out, sign off
Every stream leaves weighed and documented — waste transfer notes on the lot. Brick, steel and timber are graded for reuse in the yard; the site is cleared, levelled and signed off.
Paper follows every load
Plain-terms description of how we run a demolition. On any real job the governing document is the site-specific RAMS, and consents are the Local Planning Authority’s call — never ours to wave through. Most demolition needs prior notification or permission: check with your LPA, or ask us to talk you through it.
Site zone briefing
Three colours run the site
Every operative is briefed on the zones before they set foot past the hoarding, and the same colours mark every job record in the office.
Amber — restricted
Briefed, authorised operatives only: plant movement, attachment changes, supervised salvage. You are in it because the RAMS says your task is.
Green — clear
The working zone outside the exclusion lines — welfare, the sorting line, the loading gate. Still a live site: PPE on, eyes up.
Not yet zoned
An area the briefing hasn't reached is treated as RED until it has. Unzoned never means safe; it means nobody has said so yet.
Stackworth's own zone briefing, agreed in each job's RAMS and used on its job records. It follows the trade's exclusion-zone practice but is not a substitute for the site-specific RAMS, and never a certificate of anyone else's safety arrangements.
Weighed out, not waved through
What left the last sites, by the tonne
Reclamation is a measured claim or it is greenwash. This is the ledger the yard runs on — every stream weighed at the gate, every load documented.
| Material stream | Tonnes out | Where it went |
|---|---|---|
| Facing brick, cleaned & graded | 186.4 | Racked in the yard; sold by the pallet or laid by our own gang |
| Welsh slate, sound | 24.8 | Sold to roofing contractors for like-for-like repairs |
| Pitch pine & oak beams | 31.2 | De-nailed and sold to joiners and furniture makers |
| Structural steel | 96.5 | Weighed out to the mill for remelt |
| Clean crush & aggregate | 812.0 | Graded hardcore back under new slabs and roads |
| Total diverted | 1,150.9 | tonnes kept out of landfill |
Demonstration figures on a fictional contractor, shaped to read as a season's honest ledger — not measurements from anyone's real sites. On a live job, every line would trace to a waste transfer note.
One job, told completely
The Fenpit bottle oven range
Most contractors show you twenty finished photographs and no numbers. We'd rather tell you one job all the way through — including what it weighed and where every stream went.
- Structure
- Victorian kiln range & warehouse
- Programme
- 6 weeks, as planned
- Method
- Top-down, hand & machine
- Material out
- 1,150 tonnes
- Diverted from landfill
- 94% by weight
- Brick reclaimed
- ≈ 41,000 cleaned & graded
The range had stood empty since the eighties: fire-damaged roof, a leaning stack, and a conservation officer who — rightly — wanted the street face respected. The method statement discharged the planning condition before a tooth touched brick: asbestos survey, services proven dead, the stack pre-weakened and dropped inward inside a red zone that never opened.
Because the walls were bedded in lime, the bricks let go clean. Four of us worked the sorting line for a fortnight; the best forty-one thousand went to the racks, and eight hundred tonnes of clean crush went back under the new slab. The wall that now fronts the site is the range's own brick, relaid by our gang — the loop, closed on the same street.
The site office answers
Ask Marl what the job actually involves
Marlanswers from this yard’s own policies — the method, the zones, what reclamation is worth, what the paperwork means. What Marl will not do: price your job, judge a structure, or tell you a consent isn’t needed. Those belong to a walk-round, an engineer and your Local Planning Authority — and it says so rather than guessing.
Asked at the gate this week
The yard
Ring the office, or come and pick your bricks by hand
The reclaimed stock is racked by blend and age — come and pick your bricks by hand, or ring the office and we'll pull a pallet to match a sample.
Find us
The Marl Bank Yard, Fenpit Road, Stoke-on-Trent, ST1 9ZZ
01632 960 862office@stackworth.demo.neubor.co.ukOffice hours
- Monday
- 07:30–17:00
- Tuesday
- 07:30–17:00
- Wednesday
- 07:30–17:00
- Thursday
- 07:30–17:00
- Friday
- 07:30–16:00
- Saturday
- 08:00–12:00
- Sunday
- Closed
Have ready before you ring
- A few photos of the structure — phone shots are fine
- Rough footprint and how many storeys
- Roughly when it was built, if you know
- What touches it: neighbours, boundaries, overhead lines
- Access: gate widths, the road, anything a lorry has to get past
What's real on this demo
Every enabled screen here runs on the real shared platform against this demo's own database. Some capabilities are deliberately held back, and this is exactly which.
- LiveBusiness overviewBusiness overview runs against this business's real data.
- LiveEnquiriesEnquiries runs against this business's real data.
- DemonstrationSite boardThe site board is real machinery on a fictional yard — jobs, surveys and approvals genuinely move through the same states a real contract would, but Stackworth does not exist, nothing is charged, and no real structure is being demolished.
- LiveWalk-rounds & surveysWalk-rounds & surveys runs against this business's real data.
- LiveClientsClients runs against this business's real data.
- LiveContract performanceContract performance runs against this business's real data.
- LiveWebsiteWebsite runs against this business's real data.
- PlannedCustomer conversationsCustomer conversations is on the roadmap for this business.
- PlannedAutomation centreAutomation centre is on the roadmap for this business.