24/03/2026
🧱 Building on a love of bricks and mortar. 🧱
It’s one thing to put pen to paper or draw a design digitally, but if you are in search of technical excellence, then hands on experience and a good grasp of buildability come in handy too.
Martyn’s journey in architectural design started, quite literally, with a trowel.
A former winner of The Brick Development Association (BDA) Silver Trowel award, his expertise in designing and crafting brickwork spans five decades. And his skills are called into action more often than you might think!
Mallards Court is an 18th century house in Stokenchurch, Buckinghamshire. Commissioned to extend and alter the existing property sympathetically, Plansplus worked with local brickworks to produce bricks laid in a Flemish bond with mortar to match the existing brick.
The client was keen to create a prestigious entrance to match, so Martyn designed a brick wall incorporating arrow ‘slits’ in the piers of the wall, mirroring arrow slits in the gables of the 18th century house. Having designed it, Martyn decided he would quite like to actually build it!
The build process included designing a special ‘former’ for the curved niches. The former was easily removed, enabling the brick pointing to be finished promptly.
The results hopefully speak for themselves....
