Devon

• 1. Introduction

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  Devon is the only English county with two separate coastlines. One faces the Bristol Channel and the Celtic Sea in the north. The other faces the English Channel in the south. The county sits across a peninsula in South West England, and that shape explains the double shoreline. Devon is the third largest county by area, and it has more miles of road than any other county in England. This documentary asks how a county on a peninsula earned a place in the vocabulary of geologists. It asks who first named its valleys, and what the name meant. It also asks why Devon turns up so often in England's quarrels, from medieval raids to civil war, and why it keeps producing sailors and storytellers.

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• 2. Deep Valley Dwellers

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  In 1607, William Camden described the far west of Britain as a low, valley-filled land once held by a people called the Dumnonii. He added that the territory had since been split in two, into the lands now known as Cornwall and Devon. The name Dumnonii is thought to mean deep valley dwellers, built on the Proto-Celtic word dubnos, meaning deep.

  The Brittonic languages kept the idea alive. Devon appears as Dyfnaint, Devnent and Dewnens, and each of those names means deep valleys. The map still carries the echo. The ending combe comes from the Brittonic word cwm, meaning valley, and it is among the most common elements in Devon place names. Tor, a word used for granite outcrops, is another rare Celtic loanword that is most frequent here.

  The Saxons left their own marks. Endings in worthy point to larger settlements, while bere names mark woodland groves and leigh names mark clearings. On Dartmoor, ruined longhouses show a pattern of scattered farms much like those in Cornwall, though locals called them by names ending in cott, from the Old English word for a homestead.

  Devonshire is the older-sounding form, yet it survives in only a few places. Anglo-Saxon texts from before 1000 CE already mention the Defnas, the people of Devon, and Defenasċīre, meaning the shire of the Devonians. Everyday use favours the shorter Devon, as in Devon County Council. Devonshire lives on in The Devonshire Association and in the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment, which existed until 2007. One popular theory blames a clerical slip in the letters patent of the Duke of Devonshire, who lived in Derbyshire. That theory is wrong. The Anglo-Saxon evidence suggests the shire form may have appeared around the 8th century, as the Latin name Dumnonia gave way to Defenasċīr.

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• 3. Rocks and Cliffs

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  In the 1840s, Roderick Murchison and Adam Sedgwick named the Devonian period after this county. Devon is the only British county whose name serves worldwide as the basis for a span of geological time. The rocks behind the name are sandstones and shales roughly 395-359 million years old, laid down beneath tropical seas. In shallower water, limestone formed in the area that is now near Torquay and Plymouth.

  The Culm Measures come next. This Carboniferous formation runs from Bideford into Cornwall as far as Bude. Its name comes either from culm, a soft sooty coal found in places, or from the twisted shape of its beds. It gives north-western Devon a gentler, greener, more rounded landscape.

  Granite shapes the middle of the county. The Dartmoor intrusion is part of the Cornubian batholith, which forms the spine of the whole southwestern peninsula. Far to the east, Permian and Triassic sandstones produce the fertile red soils that east Devon is known for. Bunter pebble beds lie around Budleigh Salterton and Woodbury Common, and Cretaceous chalk cliffs stand at Beer Head. Ball clay and lignite in the Bovey Basin formed around 50 million years ago under tropical forest.

  The cliffs are the showpiece. Exmoor's Devon coast has the highest cliffs in southern Britain. The Great Hangman, a hill 318 m high, drops in a 250 m cliff face near Combe Martin Bay, and its sister, the Little Hangman, rises 218 m. In the south-east, Exmouth marks the western end of the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site, where tall cliffs expose Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous layers.

  On the mainland, no rocks are older than the Devonian, apart from blocks of Silurian and Ordovician stone set within it on the south coast. The oldest rock of all lies offshore, where the metamorphic rocks of the Eddystone reef are presumed to be Precambrian.

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• 4. Weather and Wildlife

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  More than 2000 mm of rain can fall on parts of Dartmoor in a year, while the rain shadow around Exeter and the south-eastern coast sees only about 750 mm. The North Atlantic Drift keeps the climate cool and oceanic, and winters rank among the mildest in the world for such a high latitude. Daily highs in January average 8 C.

  Sunshine varies just as sharply. The uplands near Princetown receive under 1,400 hours a year. Brixham and Berry Head, on the south-east coast, receive more than 1,800 hours and count among the sunniest places in the UK. On the north coast, west-facing Bideford Bay and the Hartland Point peninsula meet an Atlantic swell, and an easterly offshore wind gives excellent surf at Woolacombe, Saunton, Westward Ho! and Croyde.

  The variety of habitats supports a rich wildlife list. The Devon Wildlife Trust looks after 40 nature reserves. Birders set themselves the challenge of spotting over 100 species in the county in a single day. Devon is a national hotspot for the cirl bunting, the greater horseshoe bat, Bechstein's bat and the Jersey tiger moth. It is home to all six British native land reptiles, partly thanks to reintroductions, and Eurasian beavers have been brought back, mainly on the River Otter.

  The sand crocus, Romulea columnae, grows nowhere else in mainland Britain except Dawlish Warren. Botanical records begin in the 17th century, and A New Flora of Devon, based on fieldwork from 2005 to 2014, appeared in 2016. Rising temperatures have even made Devon the first place in modern Britain to grow olives commercially.

  In January 2024, the National Trust and volunteers set out to plant over 100,000 trees to create 50 hectares of new Celtic rainforest. The three sites include land near Exmoor, Woolacombe, Hartland and Arlington Court, and the rare Devon whitebeam is among the species chosen.

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• 5. Frontier Country

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  Human remains from 30 to 40,000 years ago have been found at Kents Cavern in Torquay. Hunter-gatherers are thought to have been living on Dartmoor from about 6000 BC. Much later, the Romans held the region under military occupation for around 350 years, though the land west of Exeter was treated as a remote corner and was less Romanised than the rest of the province.

  After the formal Roman withdrawal in AD 410, one of the leading Dumnonii families tried to found a dynasty and rule Devon as kings. Saxon settlers began arriving around 600 AD, first in small bands along the coasts of Lyme Bay and the southern estuaries. Devon became a frontier between Brittonic territory and Wessex, and by the middle of the ninth century it was largely absorbed. In 936, King Æthelstan fixed the western border on the east bank of the River Tamar.

  A genetic study by the University of Oxford and University College London found a division between Cornwall and Devon that follows the modern county line almost exactly. Devon's population also resembled that of northern France, including Brittany, and differed from the rest of southern England. The researchers read this as a sign that Anglo-Saxon migration into Devon was limited rather than a mass movement.

  Danish raiders struck sporadically along the coast from around 800 until shortly before the Norman conquest. Their targets included the silver mint at Lydford in 997 and the settlement of Taintona, on the Teign estuary, in 1001.

  In 1348, a fake monastic order called the Order of Brothelyngham regularly rode through Exeter. Its members kidnapped both clergy and laymen and extorted ransom money from them. The county was also an early source of tin and copper, and Devon's tin miners enjoyed real independence through the Stannary Convocation, which dates back to the 12th century. Its last recorded sitting took place in 1748.

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• 6. Faith and Rebellion

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  Saint Petroc has a probable seventeen ancient dedications in Devon, plus one at Timberscombe just over the border in Somerset, against only five in Cornwall. His churches stand nearly always near the coast, because people travelled mainly by sea in his day. One lies inside the old Roman walls of Exeter. The villages of Petrockstowe and Newton St Petroc are named for him, and the flag of Devon is dedicated to him.

  Christianity reached Devon in the mid-fourth century AD. Around 703, Devon and Cornwall joined the diocese of Sherborne. In 900 it was divided again, and the Devon bishop sat at Tawton from 905 and at Crediton, birthplace of Saint Boniface, from 912. Bishop Leofric then united the Devon and Cornwall dioceses and became the first Bishop of Exeter. Exeter was established as his cathedral city in 1050, under Edward the Confessor.

  The county then found itself on one side or another of England's upheavals. Devon featured in the Wars of the Roses and in Perkin Warbeck's rising of 1497. In 1549, the Prayer Book Rebellion caused the deaths of thousands of people from Devon and Cornwall. Zealous Protestantism took root in parts of the county while other districts stayed far more conservative. During the English Civil War of 1642-46, those divisions split the county apart along religious and cultural lines. In 1688, William of Orange landed at Brixham to launch the Glorious Revolution.

  In the 19th century, the Methodism of John Wesley proved very popular with working-class Devonians. Chapels became social centres, and male voice choirs played a central role in community life. The 2021 census shows how far belief has shifted. Christians made up 46.1% of the county, just ahead of the 45.3% who reported no religion. In 2001-74.7% had described themselves as Christian.

  The saints have kept their place in public life. In 2019, Devon County Council, with the support of the Anglican and Catholic churches in Exeter and Plymouth, officially recognised Saint Boniface as patron saint of Devon. The flag of Saint Petroc was chosen in 2003, through a competition run by BBC Radio Devon. The winning design by Ryan Sealey took 49% of the votes. It was first hoisted outside County Hall in Exeter on the 17th of October 2006.

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• 7. Mariners and Storytellers

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  Sir Francis Drake, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Sir Richard Grenville and Sir Walter Raleigh all belong to Devon's roll of mariners. So do Sir Francis Chichester and Sir William Robert Patrick Knox-Johnston. Robert Falcon Scott, leader of the Terra Nova Expedition to the South Pole, was also a Devonian. The county's coat of arms, granted by the College of Arms on the 11th of October 1926, carries an ancient ship for these seafaring traditions. Its motto, Auxilio Divino, was Drake's own.

  Pirates came from here too. Henry Every, described as the most notorious pirate of the late 17th century, was probably born in the village of Newton Ferrers. John Oxenham, who lived from 1536 to 1580, served as a lieutenant to Drake but was considered a pirate by the Spanish.

  Thomas Morton, probably born in Devon, lived from 1576 to 1647. He became an attorney for the Council for New England and built a fur-trading plantation called Ma-Re Mount, or Merrymount, around a West Country-style Maypole. The Pilgrim and Puritan colonists were displeased. His 1637 book, New English Canaan, was partly in verse, and it may make him America's first poet to write in English.

  Writers and artists followed. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Agatha Christie, Bertram Fletcher Robinson, William Trevor and Ted Hughes each lived in Devon. Sir Joshua Reynolds, founder of the Royal Academy, was born there. Roger Deakins, called the pre-eminent cinematographer of our time, was born in Devon and lives there.

  In music, Chris Martin of Coldplay was born in the county. Matt Bellamy, Dominic Howard and Chris Wolstenholme of Muse grew up in Devon and formed the band there. Nancy Astor, Michael Foot, and the Prime Ministers Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston are among the politicians who represented Devon constituencies in the House of Commons.

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• 8. Work, Food and Festivals

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  In 2019, Devon's economic output topped £26 billion, more than Manchester or Edinburgh. Visitor spending that year came to almost £2.5 billion. Tourism took off with the arrival of the railways in the 19th century, and in more recent years camping, surfing, cycling and sailing have helped revive the resorts. Farming, fishing and mining have declined, and the 2001 foot and mouth crisis harmed the farming community severely.

  Other employers have arrived. The Met Office, the UK's national weather service, moved to Exeter in 2003. Plymouth holds the head office and first ever store of The Range, the only major national retail chain headquartered in Devon.

  The railway remains a vulnerable link. In 2014, damage to the sea wall at Dawlish caused widespread disruption between Exeter and Penzance. A Network Rail study concluded that keeping the existing line offered the best value, and work to strengthen it began in 2019. Okehampton station, closed to passengers in 1972 after the Beeching cuts, regained regular services to Exeter in November 2021.

  The Devonshire cream tea, with scones, jam and clotted cream, is thought to have started here, and Australia and New Zealand call it a Devonshire tea. Some say the pasty began in Devon rather than Cornwall, and the first record of one comes from Plymouth in 1509.

  Sport has its own traditions. In the 19th century, over 17,000 people watched a Devon wrestling match against Cornwall's champions at Devonport. In 2017, Exeter Chiefs won the Premiership title for the first time, beating Wasps RFC 23-20 in the final.

  The calendar holds older customs. Whimple holds its orchard-visiting Wassail every the 17th of January. In Ottery St. Mary, villagers run through the crowds on Bonfire Night with flaming tar barrels on their backs. Berry Pomeroy still celebrates Queene's Day for Elizabeth I.

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