Drone services in Kingsbridge

Kingsbridge climbs steeply from the quay, and the streets are tight enough that access equipment is awkward on much of the older stock. Georgian and Victorian townhouses sit on the hill with slate, slate hanging and clay plain tile.

The gradient produces turbulence around chimneys and dormers even though the estuary shelters the town from the open sea, so fixings on the upper elevations work loose faster than the sheltered position suggests.

Slate hanging on walls and dormers is common and it is there for a reason. When it fails it fails at the top edge or at a junction, and the wall behind it is what is actually at risk.

Dormer cheeks are the classic weak point: small, awkward, taking weather from two directions and effectively invisible from the street below.

Chimney stacks take the same turbulence, and on the taller townhouses a stack sits well above the roofline of its neighbours, catching gusts that the street below never feels.

The estuary keeps the worst of the open sea off, but salt air still reaches the town on southerly gales, so corrosion is a slower version of the coastal problem rather than an absent one.

That produces a maintenance interval somewhere between an inland town and an exposed seafront, which is worth knowing when deciding how often a property here needs looking at.

Winter is when it shows. A southerly gale pushes estuary air up the town, and the elevations facing down the water take a season's worth of wear in a few days.

The town serves a wide rural area of farms, creeks and small settlements, and that hinterland generates a steady flow of land and building work: barns, tracks, boundaries, drainage, and farmhouses with a mix of old and new fabric.

The creek system means a lot of holdings have water frontage, which complicates boundaries and makes a top-down record more useful than a description.

Barn conversions are common, and as everywhere the problems concentrate at the junctions between old fabric and new rooflights, link sections and glazing.

A good share of the property here sells to buyers who are not local, which puts more weight on photographs than it would in a town where everybody knows the streets.

An aerial view showing the plot, the creek and the distance to the water does work that no interior shot can do, and agents here ask for it routinely.

Second home ownership also means a lot of buildings sit unwatched for months, which is exactly the pattern that turns a small roof problem into a large one.

Agents here also ask for a plan view of a plot more often than most, because a South Hams garden frequently runs to an odd shape and a photograph from above explains it in one frame.