New build snagging survey in Totnes

Totnes's dense medieval and Elizabethan core, with its slate-hung and jettied frontages climbing a very steep main street from the river to the castle, is not where anyone is building new. The town's modern estates sit on the outskirts, specifically at Bridgetown and Follaton, on gentler ground away from the historic hill and closer to the surrounding South Hams farmland.

Bridgetown and Follaton are two distinct pockets rather than one continuous estate, so a survey gets planned around which one a given plot is actually in, since they sit on slightly different ground relative to the river and the valley sides.

Totnes is inland and reasonably sheltered by South West standards, but the valley here is damp, and the dataset flags that the town's tightly packed historic roofs carry many hidden valleys and party-wall abutments that trap debris. That is a description of the old core rather than a new estate, but the same valley air that causes it works on a new roof too: a shallow-pitched valley gutter or an under-sealed abutment on a modern semi will hold water for longer here than on more open, breezier ground.

Because Totnes's new build sits in two separate locations rather than one estate, it is worth being specific about which one when booking: Bridgetown, closer to the river and the town centre, or Follaton, further out towards the farmland edge. Either way the same evidence-before-the-deadline logic applies, and travel across the town is inside the fixed price regardless of which pocket the plot is in.

Totnes's postcode area is TQ9. Totnes Castle and the Butterwalk sit at the top and bottom of the steep historic main street, a useful landmark for orientation, while Dartington Hall lies further out along the valley, none of them near the modern estates at Bridgetown or Follaton that this survey is mostly aimed at.

Dartmouth, Newton Abbot, Paignton, Kingsbridge and Ivybridge, all covered elsewhere on this site, surround Totnes within the wider South Hams, and a plot near any of those boundaries is worth checking against the right page, since the exact damp-valley character of Totnes itself is fairly specific to its position at the tidal limit of the Dart.

Concrete tile is the most likely covering on the modern estates at Bridgetown and Follaton, a plainer material than the natural slate and slate hanging seen on the historic hill above, and one whose ridge and valley detailing is worth checking on its own terms in this damp, hidden-valley-prone river valley.