Drone survey in Great Torrington

Great Torrington sits on a bluff high above a loop of the Torridge with commons and steep wooded slopes falling away on three sides. The town stands above everything around it, which means wind loading is high from every direction and driving rain finds any weakness in mortar and flashing.

That is an unusual degree of all-round exposure for an inland town. Buildings that would be sheltered in a valley are treated here as though they were on a coast, and the failures follow the coastal pattern: edges and details rather than fields.

There is a Georgian and Victorian centre around the square, terraced cottages, a glassworks and creamery industrial legacy, and post-war estates on the plateau. Corrugated metal appears on outbuildings throughout.

The industrial buildings bring larger spans and older coverings, and the outbuildings scattered around the town are the sort of structure people put off dealing with until something falls off. Both are simpler to record from above than to inspect on foot.

Torrington Commons and the steep wooded slopes give a great deal of open ground close to the town, which is useful for flying and gives good approaches from most directions.

Rosemoor and the surrounding countryside mean a fair share of rural work in the same catchment, including farm buildings and larger grounds.

Mortar is the material that suffers. Constant wetting followed by wind means bedding at ridges and hips, and pointing at verges, wears faster here than in a sheltered position, and it does so on every elevation rather than just the weather side.

A photographic record makes that comparable year on year, which is more useful on a building that is deteriorating evenly than a single inspection would be.

Enquiries here are not only houses. The town has RHS Garden Rosemoor on its doorstep, a creamery legacy in its industrial buildings and a scatter of outbuildings, workshops and stores around the plateau, and all of those have roofs that somebody is responsible for and nobody enjoys inspecting.

Larger grounds and estates raise a different question again, which is coverage rather than detail. A flight over a group of buildings gives an owner a picture of the whole holding in one visit, so the decision about which roof gets money this year is made against evidence rather than against whichever building complained loudest.

Castle Hill and the viewpoint over the Torridge loop are useful in a practical sense too, because they show how far the town stands above the valley and therefore how much weather it is actually taking compared with somewhere sheltered a mile away.