Oven cleaning in Broadclyst

Broadclyst is a large parish rather than a single village, and its housing is unlike anywhere else on this list. Cob and thatch cottages around the church and the old street, a long run of National Trust estate cottages in the distinctive Killerton red, working farms and smallholdings through the parish, and later housing on the edges.

The estate cottages in particular have kitchens fitted into rooms with thick walls, small windows and low ceilings, and a good number have an oil fired range as the cooker. That is a half day of work rather than a two hour one, and it gets estimated from a photograph before anybody commits to a date.

Where a property is tenanted from the estate, it is worth checking who is arranging and paying before booking, since that is not always the occupier and the invoice needs the right name on it.

There are working farms through the parish and a farm kitchen is a different environment from a domestic one. The oven is on for long stretches, the hob is in use early, boots and dogs come through, and the room is doing four jobs at once.

Carbon in a cooker used like that is laid down in thin hard layers over years rather than as soft grease, and it responds to soak time rather than to effort. It also means the surfaces around the cooker want doing at the same time, because cleaning the appliance and leaving the wall behind it looks worse than leaving both.

Farm kitchens also tend to have a second cooker somewhere: an old freestanding oven in a back kitchen or utility that gets used at lambing or harvest and is forgotten the rest of the year. They are quick to do while the range is soaking and they are worth mentioning when booking, because two appliances in one visit costs far less than two visits.

The Clyst runs slowly through flat, often wet meadow here and the whole parish holds damp late into spring. In an old cottage with thick walls that produces kitchens which stay cool and humid, and grease in a humid room stays soft and travels.

Practically, that widens the job. The wall behind the cooker, the underside of a shelf above it and the sides of the units either side are all carrying a film, and they are included rather than treated as extras. It is the difference between a clean cooker in a greasy corner and a kitchen that actually looks done.

The parish spreads a long way and many properties are down lanes off lanes, with gates, tracks and yards rather than addresses that satellite navigation handles well. A what3words reference or a plain sentence about which entrance to use saves more time than it sounds like it should.

Once you are there, parking is rarely the problem it is in town, and on a dry day a soaking tray can go outside in a yard, which makes a long job on a range considerably easier to run.

Killerton draws a lot of visitors through the parish and the lanes near the estate get busy at weekends and in school holidays. A weekday slot is easier for everyone and it is usually what gets offered first.