Buckfastleigh

Buckfastleigh grew where the River Mardle and the Dart come down from the southern moor, and made its living from wool. Water from the moor powered the mills that spun and wove here for generations, and the town's shape still follows the leats and mill streams that drove them. Above the town stands the ruined shell of Holy Trinity church, reached by a long flight of steps and set in a churchyard with a reputation for the uncanny, while below it the limestone caves at Buckfastleigh have produced some of the most important Ice Age animal remains found in Britain.

The town is best known now for what stands beside it. Buckfast Abbey was refounded in the nineteenth century on the site of a medieval house dissolved by Henry VIII, and rebuilt almost entirely by a small number of monks working with their own hands over more than thirty years, finishing in 1938. It is open to visitors and remains a working monastery. Buckfastleigh is also the southern terminus of the South Devon Railway, whose steam trains run up the Dart valley to Totnes, and the moor rises directly behind the town towards Holne and the Dart's wooded gorge.