Drone chimney survey in Ottery St Mary

The centre of Ottery St Mary is a compact historic core around the church, with Georgian and Victorian frontages carrying conventional brick stacks, but the lanes just behind that core still hold genuine cob and thatch survivals, and a cob building's chimney is built differently to a brick terrace's, often set into the thickness of the wall itself with a shorter, squatter stack profile that needs reading on its own terms rather than compared to a standard brick chimney. Post-war and modern estates spreading north and west carry plainer, more recent chimneys.

Ottery sits on gently rolling ground in the Otter valley, inland and reasonably sheltered overall, but the valley floor holds mist and damp in a way the surrounding higher ground does not, and moss and lichen establish quickly here on shaded stack faces and in the valleys between roof slopes. A north or east-facing stack face in this kind of setting can carry organic growth and a damp surface for much of the year even when the town as a whole looks dry.

A cob building's chimney, thatch surrounds included, is a specialist thing to inspect properly, and getting a ladder anywhere near a thatched roof at all is generally avoided for good reason. A drone survey reads the stack and the thatch interface from a standoff distance with nothing touching the roof, which matters more here than almost anywhere else in this coverage area given how much cob and thatch stock the surrounding lanes still carry.

Cadhay House and the Tumbling Weir sit just outside the compact centre around St Mary's Church, and the further out from that centre a property sits, the more likely its stack belongs to the newer post-war and modern estates spreading north and west rather than the historic cob and thatch core this page has focused on. Both kinds of stack are surveyed the same way, but the fault pattern to expect differs a good deal between them.

Honiton, Sidmouth and Cullompton are all within a short run of Ottery St Mary and all covered on their own pages, so a booking here often fits naturally alongside a nearby job.

Concrete tile on the modern estates is a straightforward covering to work a flashing detail into, in contrast to the thatch survivals in the older lanes, where the same job needs a wider stand-off from the stack and a good deal more care taken over what sits close to the flue opening.

A cob building's stack around the church typically carries a single, squatter pot set closer to the ridge than a brick terrace elsewhere would use, a shape suited to the shorter, thicker chimney a cob wall was built to support in the first place.

Parking near the church and the town's compact centre gets tight on market days, and a survey booked here works better fitted around a quieter part of the week, launched from one of the side lanes rather than the main square itself.