Descriptive Gazetteer Entry for BUCKFASTLEIGH

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.


(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))

Linked entities:
Feature Description: "a village, a parish, and a subdistrict"   (ADL Feature Type: "populated places")
Administrative units: Buckfastleigh AP/CP       Buckfastleigh SubD       Totnes RegD/PLU       Devon AncC
Place: Buckfastleigh

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