Tavistock - Tavistock Today, History
50º33N 4º08W, pop (2000e) 11 200. Market town in W Devon, England, UK; on the R Tavy and bordering Dartmoor; underground canal links the town to the R Tamar; early tin mining industry and a named Stannary town; area later mined for copper, arsenic, iron ore; ruins of 10th-c Benedictine abbey; Aldred became abbot here, 1027; bronze statue of Sir Francis Drake; arts centre; weekly Pannier Market (originated 1105); Goose Fair (Oct); popular tourist area.
There are other places called Tavistock in New Jersey, U.S.A.
Tavistock Today
Location and Layout
Tavistock lies on the edge of Dartmoor, around 15 miles north of Plymouth on the A386, with a population of 11,227 [2001 census, revised 2002]. The town is centred on the paved amenity of Bedford Square, around which are found St. Eustachius' Church and the Abbey ruins, to the west, the Grade 2-listed Town Hall, the disused former Guildhall/magistrates' court buildings, and Pannier Market buildings behind the Town Hall.
Plymouth Road, the A386 heading west from the centre of the square, is home to much of the town's tourist trade, with many hotels and bed and breakfast establishments, as well as the town's bus station.
Life and events
The town is a market town providing shopping and some entertainment for its many outlying villages and the local farming community, as well as forming a centre for the West Devon and Dartmoor tourist trade.
There is a sizeable and rapidly growing retired community, perhaps drawn by the rural tranquility and scenery, giving Tavistock one of the highest average ages in Devon.
The Market continues to operate from the large covered market building, the Pannier Market;
The biggest event in the town's calendar is the annual Goose (or "Goosey") Fair, which has existed since 1116.
The town maintains twinning links with Pontivy in France (Brittany) since 1958 and with Celle in Germany.
In 2005 Tavistock was voted 'Best Market Town' in England and in 2006 'Best Food Town', largely on the strength of the large number of independent food shops and suppliers to be found in the town and hinterland. The town is also Devon's second Fairtrade Town (in 2006).
Culture
Tavistock was the birthplace of the poet William Browne.
The town is mentioned in some of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes adventures, including The Hound of the Baskervilles and Silver Blaze.
Tavistock is tied from late medieval times with the Russells, the family name of the Earls of Bedford and since 1694, the Dukes of Bedford. The second title of the Duke of Bedford is the Marquess of Tavistock, taken as the courtesy title of the eldest son and heir to the dukedom, and illustrates the importance of this Devon town, its hinterland and the minerals beneath it to the family's fortunes. Most recently, Robin, the short-lived 16th Duke, as Marquess of Tavistock, was a frequent visitor to the town along with his wife, Henrietta.
It is this Russell family connection through the Bedford Estates which gives the name by ownership to Russell and Tavistock Squares in London, famously home to the Tavistock Clinic, and infamously the bus-bombing of 7th July 2005, which took the Tavistock connection around the world.
Current British folk-pop sensation, Seth Lakeman is from Tavistock.
History
Early days
The area around Tavistock (formerly Tavistoke), where the River Tavy runs wide and shallow allowing it to be easily crossed, and near the secure high ground of Dartmoor, was inhabited long before the historical record. The surrounding area is littered with archaeological remains from the Bronze and Iron ages and it is believed a hamlet existed on the site of the present town long before the town's official history began, with the founding of the Abbey.
The abbey of Saint Mary and Saint Rumon was founded in 961 by Orgar, Earl of Devon.
Market town
In 1105 a Royal Charter was granted by Henry I to the monks of Tavistock to run a weekly "Pannier Market" (so called after the baskets used to carry goods) on a Friday, which still takes place today.
In the 17th century great quantities of cloth were sold at the Friday market and four fairs were held at the feasts of Saint Michael, Epiphany, Saint Mark, and the Decollation of John the Baptist.
By 1185 Tavistock had achieved borough status and in 1295 became a parliamentary borough, sending two members to parliament. In 1305, with the growing importance of the area as one of Europe's richest sources of tin, Tavistock was one of the four stannary towns appointed by charter of Edward I, where tin was stamped and weighed and monthly courts were held for the regulation of mining affairs.
The town continued to prosper under the charge of the abbots, acquiring one of England's first printing presses in 1525. Tavistock remained an important centre of both trade and religion until the Dissolution of the Monasteries - the abbey was demolished in 1539, leaving the ruins still to be seen around the centre of the town. From this time on, the dominant force in the town became the Russell family, Earls and later Dukes of Bedford, who took over much of the land following the Dissolution.
Francis Drake
Around 1540 (some sources state 1542 as the exact year), Sir Francis Drake was born at Crowndale Farm, just to the west of what is now Tavistock College;
The famous statue of Drake on Plymouth Hoe is a copy of that on a roundabout on the A386 at the western end of the town, with panels not replicated on the Hoe copy.
Industry
Mines of copper, manganese, lead, silver and tin were previously in the neighborhood and the town possessed a considerable trade in cattle and corn, and industries in brewing and iron-founding.
By the 17th century, tin was on the wane, and the town relied more heavily on the cloth trade.
The woollen industry decayed at Tavistock and was attributed by the inhabitants in 1641 to the dread of the Turks at sea and of Popish Plots at home.
In 1694, William Russell, 5th Earl of Bedford became the first Duke of Bedford.
By 1800, cloth was heading the same way as tin had done a century earlier, but copper was starting to be seriously mined in the area, to such an extent that by 1817 a canal had been dug (most of the labour being done by French prisoners of war from the Napoleonic Wars), to carry copper to Morwellham Quay on the River Tamar, where it could be loaded into ships weighing up to 200 tonnes.
In the mid-nineteenth century, with nearby Devon Great Consols mine at Blanchdown one of the biggest copper mining operations in the world, Tavistock was booming again, reputedly earning the 7th Duke of Bedford alone over £2,000,000. The Duke built a 50,000 imperial gallon (230 m³) reservoir to supply the town in 1845, as well as a hundred miners' houses at the southern end of town, between 1845 and 1855. There is a strong, recognisable vernacular "Bedford style" of design, exemplified most strikingly in Tavistock's Town Hall and "Bedford Cottages" ubiquitous across Tavistock and much of the local area to the north and west, where the Bedfords had their estate and summer "cottage" at Endsleigh House and Gardens (since 2005, Olga Paolozzi's Hotel Endsleigh).
The railway came to the town in 1859, with the town being connected to the Great Western Railway and the London and South Western Railway. At around this time the centre of town was substantially and ruthlessly remodelled by the 7th Duke of Bedford, including the construction of the current Town Hall and Pannier Market buildings, and the widening of the Abbey Bridge, first built in 1764, and a new Drake Road ramped up northwards from Bedford Square to the LSWR station.
Kelly College, to the north-east of the town, was founded by Admiral Benedictus Marwood Kelly, and opened in 1877 for the education of his descendants and the orphan sons of naval officers, and is a pastiche of the Bedford and High Victorian styles of building.
The 20th and 21st Centuries
In 1911, the Bedford influence on the town came to an end after over 450 years, when the family sold most of their holdings in the area to meet death duties.
The Town Council is the owner of much former Bedford property from around this time, making it one of the richest parish councils in England{fact}.
West Devon Borough Council is based in Tavistock, about 500 metres north of Bedford Square at Kilworthy Park.
A war memorial in Bedford Square commemorates and lists many, but not all, the townsfolk killed in the First and Second World Wars.
The rail connection to the town was closed and mostly dismantled, between 1962 and 1965.
In 1986, the town's two newspapers, the Tavistock Gazette (founded in 1857) and the Tavistock Times (established in 1920) merged to form the current weekly publication, the Tavistock Times Gazette, with a circulation of around 8,000, with readership estimated at 3 times that{fact}.
In July 2006 Tavistock was named the eastern Gateway to the Cornish Mining World Heritage Site, which runs westward through the Tamar Valley and Great Consols Mine, down the spine of Cornwall to Lands End.
The Guildhall Square itself remains an area of dereliction : no coherent plan has come forward in recent years from the Town Council, West Devon Borough or local business.
A small group of local businessmen, collectively known as "Tavistock Forward", but unincorporated, without charitable status or with any substantial funding in place, have been revealed as negotiating to take over the Guildhall complex with Police force and English Heritage endorsement, with lease-back of the existing Police station to Devon & There have been local concerns about an un-elected group like TF managing the town's policing without the declared support of either the Town Council or West Devon Borough Council.
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