This third of three water walks explores the western landscapes of Tavistock, emphasizing historical water management and the town’s development around secondary water sources around Ford Street and Fitzford. Key points include the shift from the ford to a bridge at West Bridge, water-related place-names, the significance of local springs, the Fitz family’s water system, Tavistock Canal’s transport and power uses, and transformations in water quality.
Category: <span>Devon</span>
This second of three guided walks in Tavistock explores the historic water system in the town’s former commercial hub, focusing on the provision of potable water. The walk covers Market Street, Lakeside, and Bannawell, illustrating how water shaped Tavistock’s landscape and history through notable locations like the Lower Fishlake Conduit, Market Street Brewery, Bannawell reservoir and most notably, the Buddle House.
In this first of three water walks in Tavistock we explore the area from the town centre, out towards Parkwood to the east. This walk of about 1.5 km showcases what the earliest medieval monastic water management to the abbey might have involved, alongside the abbey’s earliest known 12th C leat. The walk provides a chance to look at the main industrial zone of the town, where water was harnessed for power. Finally, bring a peg for your nose, because we will be looking at Tavistock’s sanitary (and unsanitary) past by considering its toilet facilities and open sewers.
In this blog I reflect on the significance of Lopwell, detailing its history from the construction of the dam in 1953 and its impact on the landscape. The narrative shifts to a tragic event in 1920 involving a pleasure boat accident. The exploration then looks at Maristow House, its notable inhabitants, and ties to West Indian slavery and colonialism. I also explore the medieval Chapel of St Martin, Blaxton Woods, Blaxton Mill, and Blaxton Quay, each of which contribute to the rich historical tapestry of the region. Finally, the discovery of the Roborough Hoard, a collection of Roman coins, hints at early Roman military activity in the area. The historical and archaeological details help to paint a vivid picture of this landscape’s important past and picturesque present.
In this blog I expand on the history of the medieval Abbot’s Weir near Tavistock by exploring Rachel Evans’s detailed 1846 account in her book ‘Home Scenes’. Through her writing we get fanciful tales of a mineral-thieving abbot’s watery demise and a factually richer, less-known version of the AD 1280 dispute between monastic communities over weir-related rights. Through her nearly two hundred year old landscape account, Evans offers us a unique narrative on this once significant landmark.
Betsy Grimbal’s Tower, or the West Gate, is an important architectural survival of the medieval abbey of Tavistock; but is this building really what it seems?
In this blog I share an unexpected landscape finding. By chance I stumbled on an association between rushes, St John and an area of ‘holy’ fields south of Lamerton at Rushford. Revealed, I was amazed to learn, is a surprising story of the ceremonial role of the rush in medieval society adding historical and landscape richness to our understandings of olden Tavistock.
In this blog I discover another fish weir! Who knew weirs could be so exciting? This is not just any weir, this is the medieval Abbot’s Fish weir on the Tavy, once controlled by Tavistock Abbey but transferred to Buckland Abbey in 1278 AD. In fact, this weir probably furnished the Tavy for the best part of a millennia. The weir was notoriously the cause of a fight in 1280 AD, where bows, arrows and blood were drawn. In this blog I share details of its remains, including a whopping slab of stone the size of an estate car, and reveal its forgotten whereabouts.
In Tavistock there is a shady riverside walk on the far bank of the Tavy known as St John’s. It has an amazing history of having once housed a chapel, hermitage, ‘pest house’ and holy well. Apart from a well, nothing remains of this past, and it is fair to say very few people have any idea of its yesteryears.
In this blog I take its known history and, using new map evidence, take a more in-depth landscape look at St John’s to reveal: where the medieval road used to go; a previously un-recorded farm; a mysterious summer-house; a picturesque tor by the river that has been obliterated; and the ‘real’ St John’s Well.
I also find not just one, but three potential reasons, why St John’s is so perfectly named.
As readers of this blog will know, one of my enthusiasms is the relationship between landscape, the past, and water. So, when a friend recently shared a copy of an old map of the Bere Peninsula, the first thing I did was to eye its lines, pictures and annotations to see what it revealed about the area’s hydrological history. Scanning, I noticed ‘The Were’, on the Tavy, just south of Denham Bridge. This blog tells the tale of what I discovered about this ancient weir and my hunt to see if any evidence of it still remained.
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