New and reclaimed granite
Our range splits between the two, with slightly more new stone than reclaimed. The material is the same in both cases, which is the point: granite does not deteriorate in a road, it wears.
A reclaimed sett has rounded arrises, a worn top face and the color variation that comes from decades of weather; ours are described as salvaged from historic streets and sites. A new one has a thermal top, sawn sides and a rock faced edge, so it is regular where the reclaimed stone is not. Laid side by side the difference is obvious immediately, and neither is a lesser product than the other.
How reclaimed setts wear
Granite setts were the standard road surface across European and American cities before asphalt, cut by hand and laid in sand. What comes out of those streets now has been walked and driven over for a century or more.
That history is what people are buying when they buy reclaimed. The wear is not a texture applied to the stone, it is what a century of use did to it, and a reclaimed path reads as settled on the day it is finished. New stone answers a different brief: a crisp, regular surface that will acquire its own wear over the years it is used.
Cobblestone sizes
The sizes here run from small four inch squares through to twelve by six inch blocks, with a spread between them, and the reclaimed pieces are true cubes, not slabs: a five inch sett is five inches deep as well as across. That spread is not untidiness in the range, it is how setts are sold.
A small square sett suits a fan or arc pattern and takes tight curves; a longer block suits a running bond or a border and covers ground faster. Mixed sizes laid together produce the irregular coursing most people picture when they think of cobbled paving. The size decision is really a pattern decision, which is why the layout gets drawn before ordering instead of choosing a stone and finding a pattern for it.
Granite as paving
Granite is used for this because it resists abrasion, which is exactly what a surface driven over by vehicles needs, and that is why the original setts are still usable and why new ones are still worth cutting. The granite slab page covers the material itself.
It also takes freeze and thaw well, which is one of the things that separates an outdoor stone from an indoor one.
Where granite setts are used
Driveways, entrance aprons, paths, edging and borders around a larger paved area, and as a band within poured concrete or asphalt where a strip of cobble marks an entrance. The range also carries granite steps and treads, with a thermal top and a rock faced edge, where a path has to change level.
A full driveway in setts is the version that shows the material at its best, since the pattern has room to run and the surface reads as a single piece of work. The smaller applications, an apron at the gate or a band across a concrete drive, are the ones people reach for when the cobble is meant to mark a threshold instead of cover the ground.
The base under setts
How a cobbled surface should be bedded, jointed and compacted depends on what will drive over it and on the ground underneath, and it is the part of the job that determines whether the surface lasts.
That is work for a paving contractor and not something to take from a product page, and the paver tools range is where the equipment for it sits. Have that conversation before ordering, because the answer affects how much stone the area actually needs.
