Buckfastleigh
|
|
Template:GBdot Buckfastleigh is a small market town in Devon, England, partly within Dartmoor National Park, and on the A38, it is part of Teignbridge District Council and (for ecclesiastical purposes) lies within the Totnes Deanery. It has a population of about 5,000. It is a centre of tourism, and is home to Buckfast Abbey, the South Devon Steam Railway, and the Buckfastleigh Butterfly Farm and Otter Sanctuary.
Geography
Geographically, Buckfastleigh straddles the confluence of two small streams from Dartmoor which feed into the River Dart just to the east of the town. About one mile to the north lies Buckfast, home of Buckfast Abbey. To the northwest lie Holne and Scorriton on the southern ramparts of the Dartmoor massif.
History
The original settlement was at Buckfast, where an abbey was founded by King Canute around 1030. For some reason this abbey perished by the early 12th Century but it was refounded by monks from Savigny in 1134-36. The abbey passed to Cistercian rule in 1148 and remained so until the Dissolution
Buckfastleigh itself was The Clearing of Buckfast, and probably originated in the 13th Century. It developed slowly as a wool town and by the mid 19th Century had 4 woollen mills and 2 corn mills. A railway branch from Totnes to Ashburton was opened in 1872 which passed just to the east of the town.
Census data hows that in 1801 the population was 1525 and 2781 in 1901.