Age and type of house
A crack steps along an Edwardian string course and then stops. What decorative course is that crack following, and what monitoring has not been set up?
The crack is following the string course, the decorative horizontal band of brick or stone on this Edwardian wall, and it then stops. That is the course it is tracking. What has not been set up is monitoring: no tell-tales, no dated measurements and no repeat visit to see whether the crack is still moving. One inspection can record the path and the stop. It cannot show live movement, and it has not diagnosed a cause. The decorative course is not a monitoring record.
Last reviewed 24 October 2026. Written for buyers in England and Wales unless this answer says otherwise. No named surveyor has signed this page. It is general guidance, not a report on your house, and not legal advice.
What is the fuller explanation?
A string course projects or changes the face, so a crack often runs along the joint it offers and then dies out. That pattern can be old movement that used a weak line. It can be something that is still going on. The difference is time, which a single visit does not contain. Subsidence, where it is real, is ground movement. A crack that steps along a decorative course and stops is not, by itself, that finding. The survey should not upgrade a path into a live claim.
If you need to know whether it is still moving, agree a monitoring method with someone who will read it again, and keep the first record this survey has already made. Tell your insurer or your solicitor only what was seen: the path along the string course, and that it stops, with no monitoring in place. Do not fill in a cause the report did not give. The home survey has not set up that watch and has not measured the crack as an ongoing defect.
What should you ask your surveyor?
- Does the crack follow the string course and then stop, as you saw it?
- Did you set up any tell-tale or dated measurement?
- Are you leaving the cause unstated because one visit cannot show movement?
What are the typical next steps?
- Describe the crack as following the string course and then stopping.
- Do not invent a cause or a live-movement finding.
- Arrange monitoring only if you need to know whether it is still opening.
Costs vary with the building and with who you instruct. Where this page does not cite a published figure, ask the surveyor, a relevant specialist, or your solicitor for a written quote. Do not treat a forum average as the price.
Also asked about this
If the crack is hairline, has movement finished?
Not proved. A thin crack that stops may be old, but one visit cannot show that it has finished. No monitoring has been set up, so the survey has not called the movement over. A thin stopped crack is still one visit, not a finished watch.
Should the string course be cut out because the crack follows it?
No. The course is the decorative line the crack is using. Cutting it out is not the finding. The finding is the path of the crack, and the fact that nobody is yet watching whether it moves. Following the band is not an instruction to cut the band out.