Cooper & Codex Ltd

I'm Hamish Cooper, a chartered building surveyor (MRICS) working with old and traditional buildings across Norfolk, north Suffolk, the Cambridgeshire Fens and south Lincolnshire.

I survey historic, traditional and vernacular homes for the people buying and owning them: what a building is made from, how those materials have performed over its life, and what matters now. Where something specific has gone wrong, a crack, a damp patch, a sagging floor, a failing roof, I investigate that one problem closely and find the cause before you spend money on the cure. I sell no treatments, so my advice has nothing to earn from the answer.

I started in general practice in Norwich in 2006 and qualified as a Chartered Building Surveyor in 2013. Eight and a half years with the National Trust followed, looking after Grade I Blickling Hall and Felbrigg Hall, Grade II* Horsey Windpump and Burnham Overy Tower Windmill, the Scheduled Monuments at Ramsey Abbey Gatehouse and Willington Dovecote, and the estates of traditional and vernacular buildings around them. What that work teaches you is the long view: what a decision made today will cost or save in forty years, and how to resist the expedient repair and hold out for the right one.

The right survey depends mostly on the building itself. If you are not sure which one you need, send me the address and I will point you to the sensible one.