Drone roof inspections in Tavistock

A World Heritage Site town

Tavistock is part of the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site, inscribed by UNESCO in 2006. Its 19th-century shape comes from copper. Royalties from mines such as Devon Great Consols paid for the Duke of Bedford's rebuilding of the town centre and for rows of model cottages for mine workers: around 300 of these Bedford Cottages were built in the Tavistock district between the 1840s and 1870.

The Tavistock Conservation Area was designated in 1969, covering the town centre and the Bedford Cottages at Fitzford and Westbridge, and was extended in 2009. Many buildings are listed. None of that gets in the way of an inspection: nothing touches the roof, so no consent is needed. Repairs are different. Work on listed buildings, or changes to materials and details in the conservation area, can need consent from West Devon Borough Council. Clear photos of the existing slate, ridge, chimneys and lead let you and your roofer agree a like-for-like repair before you apply.

Bedford Cottages, slate and chimney stacks

Tavistock's older housing, from the Bedford Cottages to the Victorian terraces and stone houses around the centre, mostly carries natural slate roofs with substantial chimney stacks. Roofs of this age tend to show the same faults: slates slipped or cracked at the eaves and verges, nail sickness (corroded fixings) letting slates slide, eroded mortar on stacks, and old lead flashings that have split. On terraces, stacks and gutters are shared between neighbours, so a fault on one house can leak into the next.

These are also roofs that don't take kindly to being walked on. Old slate cracks under a boot, and leaning ladders against historic stonework or cast-iron gutters isn't ideal either. A drone photographs the stack, the flashing and every visible slope from above without touching any of it. If you have damp around a chimney breast, our chimney inspections are a good place to start. For a full picture of an older roof, choose the full roof visual inspection.

On the wet side of Dartmoor

Tavistock sits in the Tavy valley on the western edge of Dartmoor, and weather blowing in from the Atlantic brings noticeably more rain here than on the coast at Plymouth. Sustained, wind-driven rain is the real test of a roof: it finds lifted slates, gaps in flashing and blocked gutters that stay dry in a light shower. Mature trees in the town and up the valley add leaves, moss and silt to gutters and valleys.

We cover the surrounding villages too, including Whitchurch, Gulworthy, Lamerton, Milton Abbot, Mary Tavy, Peter Tavy, Brentor and Lydford. Many have farmhouses and cottages with large, complicated roofs and outbuildings that are hard to see from the ground. Some of these villages, including Mary Tavy, Peter Tavy and Lydford, lie inside Dartmoor National Park, where the National Park Authority handles planning rather than the borough council. A gutter and valley inspection shows where rain is being held up before it gets inside.

Typical jobs in Tavistock

• Chimney stack and lead flashing checks on Bedford Cottages and older terraces
• Photographing a listed or conservation-area roof before planning repairs
• Gutter and valley checks after heavy rain off Dartmoor
• Inspecting farmhouse and outbuilding roofs in the surrounding villages

Questions from Tavistock homeowners