Tavistock is a market town in west Devon, England. It lies on the River Tavy, from which its title derives, & has the population of around 11,000. It traces its history back at least to 974 A.D., when the Benedictine Abbey, whose ruins lie in the centre of the town, was founded. Its best known boy is the sailor, privateer and circumnavigator Sir Francis Drake.

There are more web pages known as Tavistock within New Jersey, U.S.A. and Ontario, Canada.

History
Early Days
A metropolitan area as much as Tavistock, in which a Tavy diarrhea wide & shallow leaving it to exist as easily crossed, and touching a locate high ground of Dartmoor, was inhabited long prior to a historical record. A encompassing region is littered by using archeological remains from either a Bronze and Iron ages, and these are believed the hamlet existed on a site of the present town yearn prior to the town's official history began, using a creation of the Abbey. This is thought to develop taken place in the areThe of 974 A.D., though a select few sources put it when far back when 961, at a behest of Ordgar, Earl of Devon. A town & abbey suffered good damage at a mitts of Vikings in 997, however was restored & rebuilt by Ordgar's boy Ordulph (there is [http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/news_features/2004/tavistock_cream_tea.shtml evidence] to indicate that local specialty a cream tea was first served on this text, to workers in a period of the construction). Tavistock before long became the prosperous & thriving personal injury settlement, profiting from either plentiful wool and tin in the area.

Abbey town
Inside 1105 a town was granted by Royal Charter the right to run the hebdomadally "Pannier Market" (so known as when a baskets utilized to carry goods), which however requires place from each one Friday, and around 1116 the 3-day fair was also granted, ingesting place about a feast of St. Runyon, another tradition that is still maintained in the shape of the annual "Goosey" fair. By 1185 Tavistock got achieved borough status, and inside 1295 became the parliamentary borough. Within 1305, sustaining a growing importance of the region when one of Europe's richest sources of tin, the town wwhen established as one of trine Stannary towns within Devon, generating it the right to weigh & treat in tin.

By this period a parish church, dedicated St. Eustachius, stood near the centre of town, and it was reconstructed and expanded by Abbot Robert Champeaux in time to be dedicated by Bishop Stapledon in 1318. It was farther rebuilt & enlarged into its todays form between 1425 & 1450, at which period a Clothworkers' Aisle was involved, an indication of the growing importance of the textile industry to the local economy - the trade was protected by the 1467 statute.

A town continued to prosper under a charge of the abbots, acquiring one of England's number one printing presses in 1525. Tavistock remained an crucial centre of two trade and religion until the Dissolution of the Monasteries - a abbey was demolished inside 1539, allowing a ruins however to become seen in the area of the centre of the town. From either this instance in, a dominant click in a town became the Russell personal, Earls and later on Dukes of Bedford, who took above great deal of a land as a consequence a Dissolution; a Bedford title may however become seen about numbers of toponym around the town.

Francis Drake
In 1540 (a bit of sources state 1542 when a accurate season), Francis Drake was born at Crowndale Domestic, good to the west of what is at present Tavistock College; a Blue Plaque marks the home where he is believed to own been natural. He became the large figure of his age, the champion of Queen Elizabeth, a number one Englishman to circumnavigate the world & winner of the famously decisive triumph against the Spanish Armada in 1588. A notable statue of Drake in Plymouth Hoe is thought to be the copy of that in the roundabout near the school, & he late manufactured his personal at nearby Buckland Abbey, now the museum to Drake.

Copper and the Bedfords
Per 17th Century, tin was on a ebbing, & the town relied sir thomas more heavy on the fabric trade. Under a stewardship of a Russells a town remained prosperous, surviving the Black Death in 1625 (though 52 townspeople died). In the English Civil War starting 1642, the town was at number 1 held per Parliamentarians (Francis Russell, 4th Earl of Bedford was a leading figure in the parliamentarian movement), prior to late hosting King Charles I and his army for a instance.

Within 1694, William Russell, 5th Earl of Bedford became the foremost Duke of Bedford.

By 1800, textile wwhen running the equivalent way as tin experienced done a century earliest, however copper was starting to be seriously mined in the arethe, to such an extent that by 1817 a canal had been dug (most of the labour existence treat French prisoners of war from the Napoleonic Wars), to carry copper to Morwellham Quay on the River Tamar, where it can be loaded into ships weighing as much as 200 mt. In the mid-nineteenth century, sustaining nearby Devon Low Consols mine at Blanchdown one of the large mining operations in the globe, Tavistock was booming once more, & the Duke of Bedford built a 50,000 imperial gallon (230 m³) reservoir to supply the town inside 1845, also as a hundred mineworker' houses at a southern prevent of town, between 1845 & 1855. A railway came to a town in 1859, & at as much as this period a centre of town was substantially remodelled, including the construction of the todays Town Hall and Pannier Market buildings, and a widening of a Abbey Bridge, number 1 built in 1764; the people got peaked at around 9,000. Inside 1868 the town wasted one of its 2 representatives as a parliamentary borough, & around 1885 misplaced its borough status altogether, merging by using a county section.

The 20th Century
Around 1911, a Bedford influence on a town come to an prevent once concluded 450 years, when the personal sold virtually all of their holdings in the area to meet death duties.

Within 1933 a long-disused canal was put to apply providing hydroelectric power for the area.

The war memorial in Bedford Square commemorates and [http://www.tavistockwarmemorial.co.uk/ lists] a townspeople flushed in the First and Second World Wars.

A rail connection to the town was closed, & mostly dismantled, between 1962 & 1965.

Inside 1986, a town's ii newspapers, the Tavistock Gazette (founded inside 1857) & a Tavistock Days (established around 1920) merged to form a todays each week publication, the Tavistock Days Gazette, by using a circulation of around 8,000.

Tavistock Today

Location and Layout
Tavistock lies on the edge of Dartmoor, around Xv miles n of Plymouth on the A386. A town is centred in Bedford Square, about which are then observed St. Eustachius' church & a Abbey ruins, to a west, & the Town Hall & Pannier Market buildings to the east. Abbey Bridge crosses a Flow of any stream Tavy south, patch West Street & Duke Street, in either side of a northward prevent of the square, form the independent shopping areas, with a indoor market heading behind Duke Street. Plymouth Road, running west from either a centre of the square, is page to very much of the town's tourist trade, with several hotels and bed and breakfast establishments, when well as a town's bus station and ice rink. Between Plymouth Road & a Tavy lies an extended strip of public park, known locally as a Meadows, along by using park, the Wharf theatre, cinema and culture centre, and the public swimming pool. West of a Meadows come witnessed the real swimming fields & buildings of Tavistock College. Farther south along a Plymouth Road lie industrial estates, supermarkets and other big retail outlets. Northward & east of town, a moor begins almost immediately.

Life and events
the town is no protracted the bustling industrial centre, however remains a market town providing searching & amusement for its several outlying villages and the local farming community, when well as forming the centre for the West Devon & Dartmoor tourer trade. These are residence to Tavistock College, a state-funded specialist Language College with all over 1,850 pupils from either the super wide catchment metropolitan arethe; there exists likewise a private school, Kelly College, situated upright outside town to the east. There is a sizeable retired community, drawn by the rural tranquility & scenery.

A market continues to work from either a big covered market building, a Pannier Market; a independent market get on Fridays, with sir thomas more times swimming hikers to various more specialised cases, like craft fairs, farmers' markets, antiques etc.

A large event in the town's calendar is the annual Goose (or "Goosey") Fair, which has been in existence since 1116. Originally scheduled to happen on the feast-day of St. Runyon, it today occurs on the 2nd Wednesday of October, and requires across tremendously of a town for many times either side, drawing crowds which far outnumber the resident people. Traditionally, a fair was an chance for locals to choose their Christmas goose, allowing plenty of period to fatten the bird prior to Christmas come; present, along by using the people of street vender selling a brobdingnagian range of wares, there are all the rides and games associated with funfairs; geese can however exist as purchased. There is a song associated with a fair.

A town maintains biparous links by using Celle in Germany and Pontivy in France.

Culture
Tavistock was a birthplace of the poet William Browne.

A town is mentioned around a bit of of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes adventures, including The Hound of the Baskervilles and Silver Blaze.

These are as well receives the pass mention in R. D. Blackmore's classic Lorna Doone.