Builders in Great Torrington, the town closest to home, on the streets we know best.

Great Torrington is the closest town of any size to our base, and it is the town we work in most often. The hilltop position that gives the town its views across the Torridge valley also gives it steep, narrow streets that were laid out long before anyone imagined a builder's van, let alone a scaffold lorry, would need to get down them.

The town's housing stock is a genuine mix of periods. Around the centre and along streets like New Street and South Street you find Georgian and early Victorian townhouses, tall and narrow, often three storeys, with party walls shared between neighbours and very little room to store materials on site. Further out towards the edges of town there is a run of Victorian terraces and then twentieth-century estate housing heading towards Calf Street and beyond, where access opens up but the buildings themselves bring their own quirks: solid walls with no cavity, later extensions bolted on without much thought for how the roof drains, and wiring and plumbing that has been added to rather than replaced.

The Commons, the large area of open grazing land that wraps around much of the town, is one of Torrington's defining features and one reason properties on its edge have such long, uninterrupted views. It also means some properties back directly onto open land with no rear vehicle access at all, which changes how we plan deliveries and where materials get staged before they go in.

Steep streets are the other constant. Getting a scaffold lorry, a skip or a delivery of blocks up some of the older streets in the town centre takes planning that a flatter town simply does not need. We know which streets can take a full-size wagon, which need a smaller vehicle and a hand-carry from the nearest turning point, and which need permission or a temporary road closure arranged with the town council or Devon County Council highways before a single delivery is booked.

Because we are minutes away, Torrington jobs also tend to run more efficiently in another sense: if a delivery is delayed or a decision needs making on site, someone from our team can be there within a quarter of an hour rather than losing half a day to travel. That proximity does not change our prices, but it does mean less dead time on your job.

The town's conservation area, which covers much of the historic core, brings its own planning considerations: window styles, materials and even paint colours can be controlled on properties within its boundary, and we factor that into any renovation or extension quote from the outset rather than discovering it after drawings are drafted.