Plympton Erle grew up around a castle belonging to the earls of Devon, who granted the settlement’s first borough charter in 1194. It became a coinage town, a centre for processing Dartmoor tin, in 1328, but local production of this metal declined in the late medieval period, when Plympton was also outstripped economically by the nearby port of Plymouth. By the early seventeenth century the castle had fallen into decay, though the townsfolk still enjoyed a measure of prosperity.
A settlement from Saxon times, Plymouth derived its prosperity from its strategic location at the head of one of the best natural harbours in south-west England. Its prominence as both a port and a royal naval base dated from the thirteenth century. During Elizabeth’s reign the town came into its own as the launch pad for English exploration of North America, and the regular departure point for military expeditions against Spain, not least the fleet that harried the 1588 Armada.
Tiverton, a large market town situated near the confluence of the Rivers Exe and Loman, about 13 miles north-east of Exeter, had been ‘the most considerable industrial town in Devon’ during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. However, its manufacture of serges and other woollen cloths had gradually declined during the eighteenth and it suffered an economic collapse when export markets in northern Europe were lost as a result of the French wars.
Bere Alston, a small village covering an area of some ten acres in the south-west of the county, relied for employment mainly on the neighbouring tin and silver-lead mines, but it was reported in 1831 that the male population had fallen from about 400 to 200 in the past decade as a result of mine closures. Ibid. (1831-2), xxxvi. 37; White’s Devon Dir.
Plympton Erle, a small stannery and market town situated in a valley close to the River Plym, about five miles north-east of Plymouth, consisted of ‘four small streets, with a few respectable dwellings in the suburbs’. Its trades, such as tanning, brewing, wool combing and hat making, had all died out by 1800 and the weekly market was in decline, leaving nothing to distinguish the town economically. Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1830), 255; White’s Devon Dir. (1850), 552-4; J.B. Rowe, Hist. Plympton, 383-8; W.
Exeter, a cathedral city and port, situated on the eastern bank of the Exe, about nine miles from the English Channel, had lost its position as a leading producer and exporter of serge and other coarse woollen cloths by the late eighteenth century. It continued to provide an outlet for woollen goods manufactured in Devon and served as the chief distribution centre for the general trade of the region. There was also ‘a large demand for the various articles manufactured in the city’, including iron, brass, leather, paper, beer and milled corn.
Ashburton, a stannery and market town situated on the south-eastern border of Dartmoor, in a ‘fertile valley’ suited to livestock farming, had prospered in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a centre of woollen cloth manufacturing and as ‘a great thoroughfare’ for traffic between Plymouth and London. The production of a coarse cloth known as long ells continued to be the town’s ‘staple trade’, employing ‘a great many hands’, but this had reached its peak by the 1820s and depended heavily on access through the East India Company to the Chinese market.
Saltash, a small port and market town on the south-eastern border of the county, about five miles from Plymouth, was situated on a ‘bold and commanding headland’ at the junction of the Rivers Lynher and Tamar. It consisted of three ‘narrow’ streets and the houses, though many bore ‘marks of great antiquity’, were ‘indifferently built’. Most of the inhabitants were fishermen or employees of the Devonport dockyard.
Plymouth, ‘one of the largest seaports in England’, was the easternmost of three adjoining towns situated on a peninsula between the Plym and Tamar estuaries, where they entered the English Channel. On the west bank was Plymouth Dock, renamed Devonport in 1824, the site of a major naval base and dockyard, which had grown spectacularly during the eighteenth century so that by 1801 its population exceeded that of Plymouth.
Honiton, a market town situated beside the River Otter, in the east of the county on the Exeter to London road, consisted ‘principally of one street, nearly a mile in length, containing many good houses’, which had mostly been built since the fires of 1747 and 1765. It had ‘long been celebrated’ as a centre for the manufacture of fine lace, which was also carried on in the surrounding villages, but though still quite prosperous and benefiting from royal patronage the industry had passed its peak and faced competition from the rise of factory-based production elsewhere.
