Drone survey in Honiton

Honiton's Georgian high street was rebuilt after eighteenth century fires and is unusually uniform. Buildings of the same date, the same construction and the same roof arrangement sit side by side for most of the length of the town, with Victorian additions behind.

Uniformity is useful. When one building in a run develops a problem at a particular junction, it is worth looking at the same junction on its neighbours, because they were all built the same way at the same time by the same people. A survey of one property in a Honiton terrace frequently tells its neighbours something as well.

The town is sheltered from the sea but exposed to weather coming over the Blackdowns, and the valley is prone to sitting fog that keeps roofs damp through the winter. Prolonged wetting rather than dramatic storm damage is what wears buildings out here.

That produces slow decay: mortar softening at the ridge, moss establishing in the laps, timber staying wet at the eaves, lichen on north-facing slate. None of it is urgent on any given day and all of it adds up over a decade, which is exactly the kind of thing a periodic photographic record catches.

Outside the town there is thatch on the outlying cottages and cob behind a good deal of the render. Both are traditional and both are unforgiving of prolonged damp, so keeping water off them is the whole maintenance strategy.

For a thatched cottage a flight records the state of the ridge and the coatwork and shows the parts of the roof nobody can get to. It supplements a thatcher rather than replacing one, and it is useful for exactly the reason a ladder is not.

The shape of Honiton, strung along the old coaching road, means most properties have a narrow frontage and a long plot behind. Take off ground is usually at the back rather than the front, which suits everybody since the high street is busy.

Dumpdon Hill and the Blackdowns above the town are a good indicator of conditions. If the hills are in cloud the light will be flat, which is actually helpful for photographing a roof.

A good part of the high street is commercial at ground level with accommodation above, which creates the familiar arrangement where the person who suffers a leak is not the person who owns the roof.

For EX14 addresses of that kind the report has to work as evidence between two parties rather than as a note to self. Dated, captioned photographs of a specific defect on a specific part of the roof are what move a conversation between a shop tenant and a building owner along.

The other local factor is the depth of the plots. These buildings run a long way back from a narrow frontage, and the rear roofs are invisible from the street, which is where most of the findings turn out to be.