Here we list some handy hints about buying and reusing old reclaimed salvaged and antique flagstones, setts and floor tiles.
• Reclaimed flagstones from inside old mill buildings are sometimes oil-stained, and when relaid the oil may weep out staining the flags and the look of the flagstones, and possibly making them slippy
• The best reclaimed sandstone flags are known in the trade as 'street' flags
• The best antique street flags come in even course heights, historically 18ins, 21ins and 24ins, and in random lengths and thickness.
• Random squared flagstones are not laid in courses, but squared with 'snecks' filling small gaps
• Crazy paving is angular broken stone or concrete flagstones
• A few salvage yards may try to sell customers new Indian flagstones as reclaimed
• Reclaimed limestone flagstones such as Bath stone flags (seldom available reclaimed) or Dalles de Bourgogne (similar to Bath stone) develop a smooth antique patina and are excellent for internal use
• Flagstones and tiles are 'laid' and people are 'layed' on a floor.
• A worker who lays tiles setts and flags is a 'paviour' and the tile that is laid is a 'paver.'
• Traditionally the word 'sett' means a man-made cubic stone, while a 'cobble' is a stone that has been naturally eroded by water or ice.
• To clean and polish the surface grout off newly-laid reclaimed flagstones or antique floor tiles, just before the grout goes hard, clean the grout and the edges of the tiles or flags using a rag and sharp sand, and then polish the flagstone or tile edges using damp sawdust.
• Traditionally paviours often used what they called black mortar - a fifty fifty lime soot mix - to waterproof external flagstones or setts laid over pavements above basement level and vaults.
• Reclaimed setts should be laid in a soft lime mortar with perhaps a small amount of Portland cement added.
• Setts should be laid with thin not thick joints to look best, but some modern paviours will lay them with very large joints to increase the area covered per tonne.
• Polish setts, after laying, with a brush or rag and sharp sand to remove almost-dry mortar from the face of the setts.
• To tell sandstone from limestone, wet the stone, and the quartz grains in the sandstone tend to glisten, while the shelly matrix of limestone tends not to glisten.
• Antique and reclaimed flagstones can be made from granite, slate, limestone, sandstone and marble.
• Reclaimed setts can be made from basalt, granite, sandstone, limestone and wood.
• Wooden setts were used in areas for 'carriageways' and streets where quietness was important, such as some residential areas, outside a hotel, hospital or church. Normally laid in asphalt. They can still be found in some old streets.
• Antique iron and prism glass pavement lights are still available reclaimed.
• The best Victorian stable pavers were made from Staffordshire blue brick clays which gave a very hard and durable paver, but some 'fakes' were made from normal red brick clay and then coated with a blue slip.
• Thickness and size of flagstones and setts determine the maximum load of the traffic they carry - the thicker the flag or sett, and the smaller the length and width, the more weight it can carry - so setts were used for roadways and flagstones were used on pavements.
• Flagstones can simply be swept and washed clean naturally with PH neutral soap and water and a soft brush or cloth.