Roofers in Dawlish

The centre of Dawlish is built around the Lawn and Dawlish Water, and the houses either side of it are Regency and Victorian: villas and terraces in stucco and local red stone, slate roofs, bay windows, and chimneys that have been repointed more than once. That core is the Dawlish conservation area. The streets climbing behind the town are Victorian terraces and later semis; the land towards Dawlish Warren and along the Exeter road is twentieth-century, with bungalows and estates from the 1950s onwards, chalet bungalows with big dormers, and holiday-park chalets at the Warren that have flat roofs of their own. Holcombe, between Dawlish and Teignmouth, is a village of cottages and villas on the cliff with its own conservation area.

Dawlish faces east-south-east across Lyme Bay, and when the weather comes from that quarter it arrives with nothing to slow it down. The 2014 storm that breached the railway sea wall is the extreme case, but every winter brings smaller versions: spray over the wall, salt on every roof on the front, and gusts that lift ridge tiles and strip slates from the exposed slopes. The red sandstone the town is built on and against also weathers fast, so chimneys built from it need repointing more often than brick.

The seafront terraces back onto the railway and have no rear access, so work there is from the street with a licence. Up the hill the terraces are reached from the pavement, and the estates from the drive. Teignbridge Council lists Dawlish and Holcombe as conservation areas; inside them a change of roofing material on a visible elevation needs checking, a like-for-like repair does not.

Dawlish, Dawlish Warren, Holcombe, Cockwood, Starcross and Kenton. Teignmouth to the south and Exmouth across the estuary each get a page to themselves.