Part 2 – Grenofen Bridge to Tavistock Abbey
This is the second of two blog posts following a route between Buckland Abbey and Tavistock Abbey. This second leg looks at the section from Grenofen to Tavistock Abbey. 2.6 miles.
For Part 1 of this walk go to – A Forgotten Abbot’s Way: Buckland Abbey to Grenofen Bridge
In the first part of this walk we looked at the evidence for this ancient and ecclesiastic routeway between Buckland Abbey and Tavistock Abbey and some of the interesting things along that stretch of the path. In this second part the rise of turnpikes roads and how these ended our route’s use as a common thoroughfare is explained, along with some more interesting things along the Grenofen to Tavistock section.
Background
Before the coming of the turnpikes, the roads of England were known to be in poor condition. This was because from the 16th C responsibility for road maintenance was on a parish by parish basis – by men giving their labour, and property owners paying rates that in turn were used to supply materials. The main roads through parishes were travelled as much, if not more, by people ‘passing through’ rather than local traffic. This led to resentment in local communities of the toil and money they put into road maintenance. As Woodcock says:
The result, unsurprisingly, was that such work as was done on the roads was minimal and was performed grudgingly, and therefore with little attention to quality.
Woodcock (2004, p116)
Turnpike Trusts, which used tolls to finance (and profit from) better quality turnpike roads, was a movement that gathered pace in the late 18th C. The road from Tavistock, through Whitchurch was one of the first turnpike roads in the area as approved by parliament:
“That road from Market Place in Tavistock across church yard to lower Abbey gate over River Tavy, thru St John’s Lane by Ash Farm House and Sortridge Gate to North end of Horra Bridge“
J House of Commons – Reports, 10 Dec 1761 Tavistock
But this long-used main road wasn’t a success. Unprofitable, the trust upped the tolls, reduced concessions for local farmers and reduced maintenance to cover the costs. It seems, local obstructions exacerbated the problem. Woodcock (2004) tells of ‘recalcitrant’ local landowners with whom the Turnpike Trust had to take on. Apparently:
“It took a long time and a lot of money to get rid of the pig house in Whitchurch that jutted out dangerously into the road“
Ultimately new arrangements were made and the Plymouth and Tavistock Turnpike Trust took over, connecting Tavistock up with existing turnpikes that stretched as far as Horrabridge. Utilising the western side of Tavistock and the West Bridge, the new route, opened in 1822, avoided Whitchurch altogether and ran through Grenofen and on to Horrabridge and beyond over the newly built Bedford Bridge (Magpie Bridge). Although the Buckland to Grenofen part of this route may have declined with demise of the Abbey in 1538 the 1822 turnpike was the real death knell for this Abbey road.
7 Interesting Things
1. Grenofen
Grenofen is a small collection of houses now dominated by the A386 and its ceaseless commuter, trade and local traffic. The name Grenofen is first recorded in 1238 as Grenefenne, meaning Green Fen and there existed here a manor, so much now modified that no early remnants of the building exist (Rendell, 1996).
If you are following this route and you stand at the junction of the main road with the lane down to Grenofen Bridge at your back, watching the vehicles stream from left to right, try to imagine the days before the turnpike road of 1822. In earlier times, instead of turning left or right at this junction as all vehicles must now do, they would have carried straight over, through a lane in front of you that is now blocked off to vehicular access.
The whole geography of this place has spun on its axis in the last two hundred years. It has spun to reflect the shifting importance of places and the shifting quality of roads. For me, this junction is symbolic of the whole story of this ancient road – its raison d’être, and its demise.
Changes to the roads have not caused traffic to divert away from Grenofen – in the past travellers came through here to Buckland or on to Horrabridge via Sortridge – what is now the back road. In terms of volume it is busier than ever. The difference is, these days, our faster pace of travel means we don’t give Grenofen much thought apart from breaking to obey the 40mph speed limit.
2. Whitchurch
Whitchurch was recorded in Domesday as Wicerce and was held by a chap called Roald, and by Saewin before him. Whether the name Whitchurch relates to a white stone church or a long lost Celtic saint, Saint Wita, we will never know. The old village lies around the crossroad of Whitchurch Road, Anderton Lane and Church Hill. Here the oldest buildings are the church and the Whitchurch Inn, which was originally a church house. The Whitchurch Inn, as Woodcock says (2004), with its position on a road with monastic linkages, has every indication that it was a ‘medieval hostelry offering accommodation, hospitality and shelter to weary travellers‘. There are plenty of other old buildings at the ancient heart of the original nucleated village and some of them still bear names showing their original purpose such as the old smithy.
3. Whitchurch Road
Before the Victorian era the landscape along Whitchurch Road would have been very little changed for centuries. To each side of the road was farmland with very little in the way of buildings between Tavistock and Whitchurch. A traveller would be able to look left, over fields down to the Tiddy Brook, and right, up towards Whitchurch Down. Ironically, even though the turnpike of 1822 took traffic away from this former main road, from the mid 19th C there was a cascade of development: Crelake Mine in 1857, the railway of 1859, and Victorian and Edwardian detached houses and terraces dotted its length. Infill continued with houses of all subsequent eras filling every available building plot. In terms of the built environment, Whitchurch and Tavistock became one. I have chosen this as an ‘interesting thing’ because, between the ancient settlements of Whitchurch and Tavistock, Whitchurch Road is the most changed part of this whole route.
4. The Honour Oak
Lying on the boundary of Whitchurch and Tavistock Parish is a noteworthy and large old oak tree. It goes by the epithet ‘The Honour Oak’ due to it also marking another important boundary – that beyond which officer-class parole prisoners stationed in Tavistock could not pass. Through the duration of the combined Napoleonic Wars (1793 to 1815), prisoner exchange agreements broke down with France. By 1814 about 4000 French officers were housed mostly in market towns around the country (RMG, 2017).
As the sign on the tree tells us, the Honour Oak also marked a third unpleasant boundary. During the Cholera outbreak in 1832, Tavistock residents dropped money in exchange for food so as not to transmit the disease. As I write this very section of this blog post the news on the radio has just announced the highest daily UK Covid death figures so far in the pandemic (Jan 20, 2021). Twenty first century populations can now relate to the historical social distancing of previous generations (although they didn’t have Zoom, Amazon and social media to get them through!).
5. Catherine of Aragon
In October 1501 the soon to be first wife of Henry VIII, the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon, landed in Plymouth after her fleet was blown off course en route to Southampton. Tired from the undoubtedly frightening and arduous crossing she “… lodged at the mayor’s house in Notte-street… Here she is said to have rested for a fortnight and was then escorted by way of Tavistock, Okehampton, and Crediton, to Exeter, on her way to London” (Jewitt, 1873).
The precise route between Plymouth and Tavistock is not known. Most likely it took the old road via Horrabridge, although there is a small possibility that she took the Sticklepath route and went via Buckland Abbey. I have no idea how far a Tudor princess would be expected to travel in a single day and so she may have welcomed the religious staging post. Whichever way she went, she would have passed along Whitchurch Road. Catherine’s first impressions of the English countryside would therefore have been on the road to Tavistock. The folk memory of her unexpected visit has long dissipated, but can you imagine the excitement the royal entourage would have caused as it processed, unexpectedly, into town along Whitchurch Road?
6. The Great Bridge.
Before about 1556 if you were travelling to Tavistock from Whitchurch way, you would not have crossed at Abbey Bridge because it did not exist. Instead you would have had to go a bit further upstream to the Great Bridge. This medieval bridge spanned the river on the upper side of the island (which no longer exists) and was about halfway between where Abbey Bridge and Vigo Bridge now stand (see images below).
In those times the Tavy was broader than today because it was not as channelised and so the bridge had a great span, with five arches. Woodcock (1985) mentions documentary evidence suggesting the Great Bridge was built in the 1260s and it would have been the only public bridge across the Tavy in Tavistock until West Bridge was built in 1556. This precipitated a change in name, the Great Bridge becoming The Este Brygge (East Bridge). If your business was in the town or if you were passing through then you would have crossed at the Great Bridge and entered the town close to where Market Street meets Brook Street. However, if you were on ecclesiastical business there is thought to have been another stone bridge into the Abbey that was sited roughly where the current Abbey Bridge stands today and this was called ‘Guile’ or the Abbot’s Bridge.
But what about getting across the river before the Great Bridge was built? Aethelred the Unready’s charter to the Abbey in 981 exempted it ‘from all secular service, except rate for military expeditions, and the repair of castles and bridges‘. So, whilst Medieval stone bridges are familiar to us, such a charter reminds us that widespread bridge building did not begin with the Normans. Surely a bridge here would have been a priority for the newly founded Abbey before the documented Great Bridge of the 1260s.
7. Tavistock Abbey
Ordulf, brother-in-law of King Edgar, founded Tavistock Abbey in 974 AD. The early structures of the Abbey were wooden and burnt by Danes in 997AD. It was re-built in stone with much of the small amount that still remains being medieval and from the 12th to 15th C. It is worth remembering that in the first one hundred or more years of the Abbey, Tavistock was not biggest town on the block. Power, influence and trade in the locality was held in the older Saxon town of Lydford.
However, Tavistock gradually established itself. It was granted its first charter by King Henry I in 1105 enabling it to hold a market every Friday, thus fuelling further growth. The markets were a great attraction:
Merchants who came from afar to buy tin found an oasis in the midst of a commercial desert, a trading centre complete with stalls where they could purchase bread, fish and meat … It gave Tavistock an advantage even over Chagford, where the tinners complained that the facilities for obtaining provisions were far from adequate.
Finberg (1969, p178)
With a three day fair to celebrate the feast of St Rumon being added in 1116 (and other fairs later), these opportunities made Tavistock a fulcrum of trade.
Another reason to take to the road and head towards Tavistock was for the purpose of pilgrimage. Abbeys aggressively obtained relics of dead saints for spiritual reasons, but the economic value of attracting pilgrims was paramount. Venerating visitors making offerings and buying souvenirs provided much sought after revenue (Baxter, 20017). There is no reason to think that Tavistock Abbey was any different and almost certainly held relics to attract the faithful. The antiquarian writer, John Leland (1503-1552) suggests such a fate for St Rumon who …
“Ordulf, on completing the monastery at Tavistock, was induced to remove his bones from their resting place, and to enshrine them in the Abbey Church, where they became an object of ignorant devotion.“
In Kempe (1830)
We can see that Abbey business, politics, tin, markets and fairs – all of these gave great reason to travel the muddy roads to Tavistock.
A conclusion
To return to our Abbey route, this road was one of the key ways heading north from the harbours of Plymouth to Tavistock. From the Saxon etymology of the name the ‘Staekle-path’ an ancient heritage might be inferred. By the time Buckland Abbey was founded in the late 13th C, Tavistock had long been flourishing. The inter-monastic traffic was therefore but one episode in this path’s history. Turnpike roads, particularly the 1822 road via the new Magpie Bridge, rendered this bygone route redundant.
And finally ……
Putting the finishing touches to this pair of blog posts I came across the above ancient map made by Spry (1584). The map shows two roads from Tavistock, leading to the south and east. One is the road to Horrabridge. The other is the road leading over the ‘Stickle parke bridg’ (Grenofen Bridge). What the map doesn’t show is the minor routes. Clearly the road between Buckland Abbey and Grenofen was, at least by 1584, not significant enough to record. What the map does show is that in Tudor times the Sticklepath route from Tavistock crossed the bridge and headed for Vddell torre (Roborough Rock). Another lost road; another story.
For Part 1 of this walk go to – A Forgotten Abbot’s Way: Buckland Abbey to Grenofen Bridge
The Route
- Taking up the route from Part 1, Walk from Grenofen Bridge up the steep hill, turn right at the junction and continue to the junction with the main road.
- Cross over and continue straight ahead down a road with a gate prohibiting vehicular access. This incised road was the route of the old road before the turnpike.
- This cut through joins the backroad between Whitchurch and Horrabridge. Turn left.
- Continue along this road passing Whitchurch and on to Tavistock. Cross the Abbey bridge and on Market Road, sandwiched between the market and the river, you will find a plaque indicating the location of the Great/East Bridge.
References
ARCHI Old Maps. https://www.archiuk.com/
Baxter, R. (2017). Blood and Bones: the Veneration of Relics at Reading Abbey. Reading Museum. https://www.readingmuseum.org.uk/blog/blood-and-bones-veneration-relics-reading-abbey
Finberg, H.P.R. (1969). Tavistock Abbey: A study in the social and economic history of Devon. Augustus M. Kelly: New York.
Jewitt, L. (1873). A History of Plymouth. Edward Gaskell Publishers. Reprinted 2001.
Rendell, P. (1996). Exploring the Lower Walkham Valley. Forest Publishing: Newton Abbot.
RMG (2017). British and French Prisoners of War, 1793-1815, Royal Museums Greenwich, 2 Nov 2017. https://www.rmg.co.uk/explore/blog/british-and-french-prisoners-war-1793-1815
Woodcock (2004). The Book of Whitchurch – A Parish and a Community. Halsgrove: Tiverton.
Woodcock, G. (1985). ‘The Bridges of Tavistock’ in Tavistock’s Yesterdays. Penwell Ltd: Callington.
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