8' Retaining Wall - Repair

[Nightsky]

One corner of my 1960's semi is just over 3' from an 8' drop to the ground level of the house next door. The retaining wall is brick, is very old, and at some stage has had some bricks removed about 4' up. My garden wall sits atop this to another 6'.
The retaining wall needs to be made good (could be 100 years old) and the garden wall rebuilt as although this is only approx 40 years old the bricks are brittle and the mortar has completely disappeared in one place where the wall is single brick between double brick pillars.
My neighbour is a landlord and has his house in 4 flats but I don't expect problems with access but I don't see any financial assistance being available.
Can you splendid gentlemen with so much experience advise me on how to go about this maintenance work.

 

[oilman]

Seeing how close your house is to the drop, I would get a structural engineer to look at it before you do anything. It might not be a problem, but it could be expensive to use the trial-and -error approach.

When it gets rebuilt though, if the original wall used lime mortar, I would use lime mortar again as it can cope with movement better than cement, (and it looks so much better) it just needs looking after for a week or three after it's up.

 

[Nightsky]

Thanks Oilman - sounds like good advice.