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United Kingdom soil is always damp provided you dig down deep enough, and when it gets saturated, capillary action causes moisture to rise up to the surface. 
If that happens and you rest a cardboard box upon the ground, the water dampens the cardboard too. Similarly, moisture naturally rises up through porous brick walls, and that’s what we call rising damp.
A damp course is a physical damp-proof barrier above the ground on which the walls of a building rest. It may also be a vertical barrier to prevent rainwater intrusion from outside, although this is less common. The earliest horizontal barriers were inserted using slate which being dense is impervious to water. These days cheaper plastic strips are more common.
If you are planning to Find a Builder outside of Mr-Skill we recommend that you carefully research the details of what they propose by way of damp courses. Should you source a tradesman through us though, there is no need to worry. That’s because all our craftsmen follow the practices of the best London Bricklayer Firms.
A horizontal damp course should be laid between two brick courses at least six inches above the ground at the highest point, and it should never be covered afterwards by soil because this can counteract it. Should the brick course subsequently fail, then there is little point in getting Bricklaying Quotes. The only workable solution is to arrange expensive chemical injections.
This is why we always recommend employing qualified, Rated Bricklayers such as we provide at Mr-Skill. The pleasures of saving a few pounds on a bricklaying job through employing glorified handymen is easily forgotten, after you receive an expensive chemical injection repair bill.