Aerial photography and video in Honiton

Honiton grew up along the old coaching road through the Otter valley, and that history is still the shape of the town: a single long high street lined with a remarkably uniform run of Georgian buildings, rebuilt to a consistent style after fires swept through the town in the eighteenth century. From above that uniformity becomes the subject itself, a straight run of matching rooflines and frontages unlike the historic centre of any neighbouring town, with the Victorian streets built up behind it and newer estates spreading out to the north and west.

To the north and east the ground rises quickly into the Blackdown Hills, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, with Dumpdon Hill's hillfort earthworks visible on the skyline above the town. That contrast, a tight historic street grid below and open hill country immediately above it, gives Honiton two distinct pictures within a very short flight: the town as a piece of planned Georgian architecture, and the working countryside that surrounds it.

Honiton's high street has long been known for its antiques trade, and a shop or dealer trading on that reputation benefits from a photograph that places them clearly on the historic street itself, something a listing photo of a shopfront alone doesn't do. The town's lace-making heritage runs alongside it; anyone marketing that craft history, a museum display or a heritage event, gains from an aerial view that shows the high street's actual scale and setting rather than a single building in isolation.

Above the town, the Blackdown Hills' farms and smallholdings are increasingly turning fields into glamping sites, wedding barns and diversified farm businesses, and for those operators an aerial shot is often the clearest way to show a prospective guest what the land actually looks like: how a field sits against the hillside, how far the nearest neighbour is, what the view out over the Otter valley amounts to. Estate agents selling the Georgian high street properties themselves need the opposite shot, proof of position on that specific run of street frontage.

The post-war and modern estates on the town's edge serve a different market again: buyers here are choosing Honiton for its schools and its road links to Exeter rather than for period character, and estate agents marketing those newer homes benefit from an aerial shot that shows how close the gardens sit to open country and the AONB, rather than a photograph of a high street the buyer may never live near.

Honiton sits low in the Otter valley, sheltered from the coast but prone to sitting fog that settles in overnight and can linger into the morning, particularly in autumn and winter. That makes early flying a practical consideration here in a way it isn't on the more exposed coastal towns nearby, and a shoot timed for later in the morning, once the valley has cleared, generally produces a cleaner result.

Honiton's position on the old coaching road also puts Ottery St Mary, Axminster, Cullompton and Sidmouth all within easy reach for a single day covering several East Devon towns.