Drone survey in Chard

Chard sits on a ridge above the Axe and Isle valleys, high enough that streams either side of the main street run to opposite coasts, and that height means the town holds wind, snow and frost longer than the lower ground around it. It takes around 45 minutes to reach from Exeter via the A30 and A303, and it is the extra height, not the distance itself, that is worth building into the timing of a booking here.

The main street is a long run of Georgian and Victorian frontages, many faced in local hamstone, stepping down the slope with a stream either side of it. Behind that frontage sit rows of terraced housing built for the town's lace mill workers, and beyond those, more recent estates spread out over the lower ground. A survey booked on the high street itself is usually about an older, more individual building; one further out is more likely to be part of a much larger run of similar housing.

Chard Reservoir and the ground around Snowdon Hill mark the edge of the built-up area, and Forde Abbey sits just outside the town too, so a fair amount of what surrounds Chard is open countryside rather than more town. The change from streets to open ground is fairly abrupt on the western and southern edges, useful to know when a booking covers a property right on that boundary.

Being exposed on every side at that height means Chard can be holding frost or a dusting of snow on a morning when Taunton, twenty minutes down the hill, is clear. It rarely rules a day out altogether, but it is worth a quick check of the forecast for the town itself rather than assuming conditions will match the rest of Somerset.

Chard Museum sits on the high street among the buildings it documents, and the town's industrial past runs deeper than the lace mills alone, since Chard also has a claim to some of the earliest powered flight in Britain, tried out over the fields nearby long before any drone took to the air above them. None of that changes what a survey covers, but it says something about a town that has been adding new building stock onto old for a very long time, which is exactly the pattern that shows up street by street today.

A booking on the ridge itself is generally a shorter flight than one down towards the reservoir or Forde Abbey, simply because the built-up area sits close together at the top, so travel time between the drive from Exeter and the flight on site tends to favour a town-centre booking over one out on the edge.