In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Buckfastleigh like this:
BUCKFASTLEIGH, a village, a parish, and a subdistrict in the district of Totnes, Devon. The village stands near Dartmoor forest, 2¼ miles SW by S of Ashburton; and is on the line of a railway from the South Devon to Ashburton, near completion in 1869. It dates from old times; was formerly a market town; carries on blanket and serge manufactures, in mills employing about 400 hands; and has a post office‡ under Newton-Abbot, a chief inn, and fairs on the third Thursday of June and the second Thursday of Sept. ...
The parish comprises 5,928 acres. Real property, with Holne, £11,184. Pop., 2,544. Houses, 522. The property is much subdivided. The manor belonged to Buckfast Abbey; was given, at the dissolution, to Sir Thomas Dennis; and passed to successively the Doyleys, the Bradfords, and the Benthalls. Buckfast Abbey stood on the Dart, about a mile N of the village; succeeded a Saxon monastery, founded in 918; and was itself a Cistertian establishment, of 1137, founded by Ethelbard, son of William Pomeroy. The buildings of it covered several acres; but the chief remains of them are an ivy-clad tower, adjacent to the present mansion of Buckfast Abbey, and the tithe barn, about 100 feet long, at the Grange; and part of their site is now occupied by a large woollen factory. Black marble is quarried, chiefly to supply kilns. A tin mine, now the property of the Earl of Macclesfield, 2½ miles from the village, was worked in the time of Henry VI., and re-opened in 1854. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Exeter. Value, £270.* Patron, the Rev. M. Lowndes. The church surmounts a limestone eminence, overhanging the Dart, ¼ of a mile from the village; is early English, with mixtures of perpendicular and debased Tudor; and was, not long ago, restored. The churchyard contains ivy-clad remains of an ancient chantry or baptistery, many black marble tombstones, and the grave of Admiral Thomas White. There are chapels for Independents, Baptists, and Wesleyans; and charities £57. The subdistrict contains four parishes. Acres, 19,646. Pop., 4,263. Houses, 882.
Buckfastleigh through time
Buckfastleigh is now part of Teignbridge district. Click here for graphs and data of how Teignbridge has changed over two centuries. For statistics about Buckfastleigh itself, go to Units and Statistics.
GB Historical GIS / University of Portsmouth, History of Buckfastleigh, in Teignbridge and Devon | Map and description, A Vision of Britain through Time.
URL: https://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/place/898
Date accessed: 07th November 2024
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