Drone chimney survey in Totnes

Totnes's dense medieval and Elizabethan core, running steeply from the river up to the castle, carries slate-hung and jettied frontages with stacks built into or against timber-framed structures rather than plain brick terraces, and Georgian and Victorian streets add a further, more conventional layer of brick stacks alongside them. Modern estates on the outskirts at Bridgetown and Follaton carry plainer, later chimneys well away from the historic centre.

The town is inland and reasonably sheltered from the worst coastal exposure, but the valley itself holds damp, and the tightly packed historic roofs along the main street have many hidden valleys and party-wall abutments where a stack meets its neighbours closely, and those hidden junctions trap leaf litter and moss readily. A build-up like that holds moisture against flashing and pointing for far longer than an open, exposed stack face would ever experience, and it is invisible from the street precisely because it sits in a valley rather than on a visible face.

A hidden valley or a tight party-wall abutment between two of Totnes's historic frontages is not somewhere a ground-level look, or even most ladder positions, can actually see into properly. A close aerial pass looks down into exactly those spaces, showing debris build-up and any resulting damage to flashing or pointing that a street-level assessment would simply never catch.

Totnes Castle sits at the top of the famously steep main street, with the Dart running past the bottom of the town at its tidal limit, and the wider Dartington Hall estate just outside town carries its own, generally more modern stock away from the dense medieval core this page has focused on. The Butterwalk, partway up the hill, is as good a place as any to see the slate-hung and jettied frontages this town's older stacks sit within.

Newton Abbot, Paignton, Dartmouth, Kingsbridge and Ivybridge are all within range of Totnes, and Newton Abbot and Paignton are covered on their own pages here, useful if a booking can be combined with a nearby survey.

Slate hanging on some of the steeper streets covers whole elevations, stacks included, in the same way it does further west in Devon and into Cornwall, and a fault behind that hanging can be just as hidden here as anywhere else it is used, which is worth bearing in mind on the town's older, steeper properties.

The town's jettied and slate-hung buildings often carry stacks with pots set unusually close to a neighbouring party wall, a natural consequence of how tightly the medieval and Elizabethan core was originally built, and reading a pot in that position properly needs the same close standoff view this survey is built to give.

The steep main street is narrow and often busy, and a survey of a stack in the historic core is generally launched from a quieter side street or from open ground near the river at the bottom of the hill.