Ashburton (The Gatehouse Record)

In the civil parish of Ashburton.
In the historic county of Devonshire.
Modern Authority of Devon.
1974 county of Devon.
Medieval County of Devon.

OS Map Grid Reference: SX757698
Latitude 50.51512° Longitude -3.75454°

Ashburton has been described as a probable Palace.

There are no visible remains.

Description

Residential manor of the bishop of Exeter, recorded as almost destroyed c. 1500. (Emery)

The manor of Ashburton became ecclesiastical property in the early 11th century, and from 1050 onwards it belonged to the bishops of Exeter. At some date before 1238 most of the inhabited portion of the manor was constituted as a borough. The bishops were represented in Ashburton by their stewards, who visited the town only to hold courts, leaving the day-to-day administration and rent collection in the hands of the portreeve of the borough, the reeve of the manor and the bailiff. The town owed much to its situation in the midst of good arable land, but being at the margin of the rich mineral wealth of Dartmoor, it also became the natural collecting centre for tin from the south-east side of the moor, and in 1305 it was made an official stannary town, along with Tavistock and Chagford. Ashburton's cloth industry, its Saturday market for cloth, tin, corn and cattle, and its two fairs, obtained from Edward II by the bishop, gave the inhabitants the means to build one of the finest parish churches in the diocese. That the tin and woollen workers of Ashburton were able to undertake the rebuilding of the church on such a lavish scale suggests that at that time, between 1405 and 1449, the community was quite prosperous. Even so, Ashburton was by far the smallest and probably also the poorest of the parliamentary boroughs of Devon in our period. (History of Parliament Online)

The Chapel of St Lawrence is one of Ashburton's oldest and most interesting buildings. It started its life as a private chapel for the Bishop of Exeter. Ashburton was held by Bishop Stapledon who was Lord of the Manor and stayed in his 'Palace' in the Town.
In 1314 he gave the Chapel to the Town to be administered by the original Guild of St Lawrence, led by the Portreeve of the day on the stipulation that a Chantry School was maintained there. (Ashburton.org)

Sources of information, references and further reading

Further information may be available from the holder of the county Historic Environment Record.

Websites (Gatehouse is not responsible for the content of external websites.)
- Ashburton.org
Books
- Emery, Anthony, 2006, Greater Medieval Houses of England and Wales Vol. 3 Southern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) p. 549-51
  Roskell, J.S., Clark, L., and Rawcliffe, C. (eds), 1993, The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1386-1421 (Alan Sutton Publishing)
Periodical Articles
- Tapley-Soper, H., 1942-6, Devon and Cornwall notes and queries Vol. 22 p. 78-80

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The bibliography owes much to various bibliographies produced by John Kenyon for the Council for British Archaeology, the Castle Studies Group and others.

Suggestions for finding online and/or hard copies of bibliographical sources can be seen at this link.
Minor archaeological investigations, such as watching brief reports, and some other 'grey' literature is most likely to be held by H.E.R.s but is often poorly referenced and is unlikely to be recorded here, or elsewhere, but some suggestions can be found here.

The possible site or monument is represented on maps as a point location. This is a guide only. It should be noted that OS grid references defines an area, not a point location. In practice this means the actual center of the site or monument may often, but not always, be to the North East of the point shown. Locations derived from OS grid references and from latitude longitiude may differ by a small distance.
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