Buckfastleigh, Devon

Description
Buckfastleigh, a small manufacturing town and parish of Devon. The town stands on the river Dart, and has a station on the G.W.R., 224 miles from London. It has a post, money order, and telegraph office (R.S.O.), and a town-hall. It dates from old times, was formerly a market-town, and carries on blanket, serge, and paper manufactures. There are also some tanneries. Fairs are held on the third Thursday of June and the second Thursday of September. The parish, which includes part of Dartmoor, comprises 5882 acres; population, 3009. The manor belonged to Buckfast Abbey, was given at the dissolution to Sir Thomas Dennis. It now belongs to the Earl of Macclesfield. Buckfast Abbey stood on the Dart, about a mile N of the village, succeeded a Saxon monastery founded in 918, and was itself a Cistercian establishment of 1137 founded by Ethelbard, son of William Pomeroy. The buildings of it covered several acres. The abbey has been purchased by the Roman Catholics, partly rebuilt, and is now a Benedictine monastery. Black marble and limestone are quarried, chiefly to supply kilns. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Exeter; gross value, £250 with residence. The church surmounts a limestone eminence overhanging the Dart, half a mile from the village, is Early English, with mixtures of Perpendicular and Debased Tudor. The churchyard contains ivy-clad remains of an ancient church or chantry, and there is a Norman font in the church in addition to the high altar. There were originally four side altars. A chapel of ease was built in the Plymouth Road in 1894. There are Congregational and Wesleyan chapels.