Devon

Tavistock, situated in the Tavey valley 15 miles north of Plymouth, was one of the principal market towns of Devon. It was not entirely agricultural: it had an old tradition of coarse woollen manufacture and was located at the centre of the west Devon copper, tin and manganese mining district, though all these industries were in decline in this period. It was connected by a canal, opened in 1817, to the River Tamar and Plymouth. C.E. Hicks, ‘Tavistock’, Trans. Devon Assoc. lxxix (1947), 155, 159, 165-6; Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1823-4), 251-3 and (1830), 259-60; P.V.

Dartmouth, a seaport and market town situated on a ‘steep hillside rising from the west bank of the Dart estuary’, about one mile from the English Channel, had prospered for several centuries thanks to its ‘capacious’ natural harbour. However, the damage inflicted by wars on the Newfoundland fishing fleet and the Portuguese wine trade, and the decline of the woollen textile industry in Devon, meant that Dartmouth’s economy was stagnant by the early nineteenth century and depended heavily on its coastal trade; even this had ‘lately been diminished by the rivalry of neighbouring ports’.

Totnes, a market town situated on the western bank of the navigable River Dart, midway between Plymouth and Exeter, lay at the heart of a ‘rich agricultural district’ known as the South Hams. It consisted principally of ‘one good street nearly three-quarters of a mile in length’, which led to the river where a bridge, rebuilt in 1828, connected the town to the ‘handsome eastern suburb’ of Bridgetown, in the neighbouring parish of Berry Pomeroy.

Barnstaple, a seaport and market town situated at the head of the Taw estuary, had been an important distribution centre since medieval times. By the early nineteenth century it depended on a ‘steady ... perhaps not very lucrative’ coastal trade, involving corn, leather and other materials drawn from ‘an extensive and improving’ hinterland, though there was some revival of overseas trade after bonded warehouses were established in 1822. The woollen industry was in decline, but lace manufacturing had recently been introduced and many people were employed in malting and shipbuilding.

Okehampton, a small market town situated in the valley of the River Oke, close to the northern edge of Dartmoor, had been a ‘great centre’ for the manufacture of serges and other coarse woollens, but this had declined by the 1790s. Many of the inhabitants were engaged in agriculture, particularly sheep farming, and the town’s economy was otherwise ‘dependent on its markets and fairs’.