Builders in South Molton,from the Georgian squareto Exmoor's exposed high ground.

The town centre sits within a conservation area, and its buildings are a mix of listed Georgian townhouses, coaching inns converted to shops and flats, and Victorian infill. Solid stone and cob construction is common, often rendered over in lime that needs matching rather than replacing with a modern cement mix. On kitchen and bathroom renovations here the biggest challenge is often not the room itself but getting materials and skips down streets never designed for anything wider than a horse and cart, and on structural work a chimney breast removal can need careful temporary support because the wall above is doing more work than the original drawings suggest.

Out beyond the town, South Molton's hinterland is farming country, and a large share of our work here is agricultural: barn conversions turning traditional stone or cob barns into houses or holiday accommodation, extensions to farmhouses that have been added to piecemeal over a century or more, and new outbuildings for equipment and stock that sit alongside residential conversions on the same yard. These jobs come with their own set of practical realities. Access down farm tracks and unmade lanes often rules out standard delivery vehicles, so materials get planned and staged differently to a town job. Many properties out here are on private water supplies and septic tanks or treatment plants rather than mains, which has to be factored into any extension that adds bathrooms, a kitchen, or additional occupants.

Ground on the edge of Exmoor rises quickly, and with height comes exposure. Properties on the higher fringes towards Exmoor's boundary take a battering from driven rain and wind that a sheltered town-centre terrace never sees, and that changes specification choices: render systems and pointing detail that will actually survive the weather, roof coverings mechanically fixed rather than relying on weight and gravity, and rainwater goods sized generously rather than to a minimum standard. We've seen render blown off exposed gable ends within a few years where it was specified for a milder site, and we design around that from the outset rather than repeating the mistake.

Barn conversions specifically carry their own structural and regulatory layer. Traditional stone or cob barns were built for animals and hay, not habitation, which means floor slabs, damp-proofing and insulation all have to be introduced from scratch, often while retaining original openings, roof trusses or stonework that planning conditions require to stay visible. Structural surveys are standard practice before we quote this kind of conversion, because what looks like a sound wall from the yard can turn out to have very little mortar left in the joints once you get close to it. We tie new work into the old fabric properly, with a structural engineer's input on anything load-bearing, rather than assuming the existing structure will simply carry whatever's asked of it.

Clay and shillet subsoil both turn up on farmland around South Molton, and ground conditions can change noticeably across a single field, let alone a single farm. We always dig trial holes before finalising a foundation design for an extension or new outbuilding here, because a foundation that would be perfectly adequate on one side of a yard can be the wrong specification twenty metres away.