Fretting brickwork and motar

I have a cellar under a newly purchased renno which is enclosed with a double thickness brick wall about 400mm thick. The house is about a 100 years old or more. The cellar is quite dry and there only appears to be a very small amount of salt damage. It looks pretty good for its age. The walls don't appear to be taking any lateral weight. The brick cellar walls are supporting most of the timber framed, iron clad house on top.
However, the face of many of the bricks is fretting away. They appear to be old red sand based bricks. The mortar is not fairing well either. It is easy to just rub the face of the brick and mortar away.
This space is 6.6m square and 2.4m deep. This is too good an area not to do something with it.
If I had the resources I'd probably shotcrete it but that's not going to happen. Is there a product out there to spray/roll/brush on the bricks to stabilise them to stop the fretting without resorting to rendering?