Chimneys leaking/repair cost

[HoundPaws]

Both my chimneys leak in severe, driving rain; a good, trusted builder has had a thorough look at them, cannot see anything really obvious wrong and has therefore advised rebuilding both chimneys with brick instead of stone. They are standard size chimneys I would guess. Anyone had similar work done and any idea of costs as I am awaiting the quote..thanks! The house was surveyed but this was not picked up of course..

Do you use the chimneys? We had this last year - in (hopefully) exceptional rain. The builder we spoke to said the bricks had just become saturated with water and some water was getting trapped between the chimney and the slope of the roof. We had the chimney capped but he also said that the best way to avoid this happening again was to have a fire/stove in the fireplace and light it regularly through the winter to dry out the brickwork from the inside.

We've just had our chimney rebuilt as it was cracked and we'd put it off long enough (didn't want to risk another winter with it in that condition!)

It came to £1600 - it needed done but hate boring maintenance work like that costing so much