 |
| 14 East Street, Ashburton. |
In my family tree research, I discovered a whole branch of the family that lived in Ashburton, the little town just over the hill from our little Devon bolthole. We hadn't visited Ashburton during our last trip, so faced with a few spare hours we made our way to the little town on the River Dart.
Asburton is an historic Stannary town that has links with the mining industry, namely Tin, Umber, and Ball Clay, as well as the more traditional agricultural pursuits of sheep, wool, and weaving. My family links are with men working in the Umber and Clay mines, and some of the women working in wool-related trades.
From census records going back to 1841, I can trace family to Cad Lane, Heavyhead Lane, East Street, and Ladwell. Not all the original dwellings remain, but the streets do, albeit that Heavyhead Lane now goes by the name of Woodland Road*. We were able to spend a happy hour or so walking the same streets that my ancestors lived on. One family group lived in an Inn at 14 East Street, and the building still remains. It's a private dwelling now, but after the Inn closed, it became a tea room, and remained so for many years. It was nice to see the building in the flesh, so to speak, and to touch it, just as my relatives would have.
The streets of Ashburton are narrow, and quite unsuited to modern car traffic, but even with the traffic movement, the place still holds a fair chunk of charm.
As part of our walk, we found the old station, formerly the terminus of the Totnes to Ashburton Great Western Railway branch line. The station closed in the late 1960s, although the buildings remain and are home to some car repair facilities. The branch line still runs, though, terminating now at Buckfastleigh a few miles to the south of Ashburton. It was bought by the then Dart Valley Railway (now the South Devon Railway), and since the early 1970s has operated as a hertitage railway running regular steam services to and from Totnes.
Being in this part of Devon, I can barely walk any street that at least one of my ancestors has walked upon. I have links with the villages of Caton and Staverton close to Ashburton, and many, many more links with places slightly further afield including Teigngrace, Teignbridge, and Newton Abbot. Those other places we will explore in due course, but for now I am more than content to have walked the streets of Ashburton, knowing that my family had walked those same streets 150 years before me.
*Old place names have been garnered from the National Library of Scotland's Georeferenced Historic Maps.
