Overview

A combination of Italian porphyry paving‚ sawn Yorkstone paving, and local river cobbles to match the original material were used for this pedestrian paving scheme in Exeter, located near the city's cathedral and other old buildings.

Challenges

The main paving materials were traditionally laid using random lengths to minimise the wastage in production. However, the challenging part was finding river cobbles to match the original ones, some of which had come loose and been lost.

These cobbles were quite thin and had been laid on edge which had enabled them to survive almost intact even with vehicular overrun. Fortunately, suitable replacements were found locally; however, the job of hand-sorting them was not easy with less than 10% of the material being fit for use. The task took several months, and must have been the most expensive cobbles on a per tonne basis ever! However, the coverage was very good and the end result perfect, with the contractor doing an excellent job of laying them.