Dartmouth is located within South Hams local authority area. Historically it formed part of Coleridge Hundred. It falls within Ipplepen Deanery for ecclesiastical purposes. The Deaneries are used to arrange the typescript Church Notes of B.F.Cresswell which are held in the Westcountry Studies Library. The population was 2398 in 1801 3702 in 1901 . Figures for other years are available on the local studies website. In the valuation of 1334 it was assessed at £16/00/00. The lay subsidy of 1524 valued the community at £40/01/02. In 1641/2 809 adult males signed the Protestation returns. It is recorded as a borough from 1227 and was incorporated in 1604. It had parliamentary representation from 1351-1868. A turnpike was established in 1759. The community had a grammar school from 1729. A market is recorded from 14c.-1935.

A parish history file is held in Dartmouth Library. You can look for other material on the community by using the place search on the main local studies database. Further historical information is also available on the Genuki website.

Maps: The image below is of the Dartmouth area on Donn's one inch to the mile survey of 1765.

On the County Series Ordnance Survey mapping the area is to be found on 1:2,500 sheet 127/16,128/13 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 127SE,128SW
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SX870515. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SX85SE, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Outdoor Leisure 20, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 202. Geological sheet 350 also covers the area.

Illustrations: The image below is of Dartmouth as included in the Library's Etched on Devon's memory website. Other images can be searched for on the local studies catalogue.

Extract from Devon by W.G.Hoskins (1954), included by kind permission of the copyright holder:

DARTMOUTH is one of the most dramatically sited towns in Devon, built upon a steep hillside rising from the W. bank of the Dart estuary, about 1 m. from its mouth. The modern borough includes the parish and village of Townstall, on the heights 400 ft. above, which was the mother-village from which the town sprang in the 12th century.

The name Dartmouth was first applied to the mouth of the river, but from the early 13th century onwards was given to the town, which resulted from the coalescence of two small riverside settlements-Hardness on the N. and Clifton on the S. These were originally separated by a deep pool-Mill Pool which ran well back inland and was filled at high tide. This pool has been casual assemblage of houses and ship-reclaimed and now provides the only yards, which had grown up along both flat land in Dartmouth, and an easier banks of the Mill Pool to meet the needs climb up to 'the Townstall heights. (A fuller account of the topography of Dartmouth will be found in Russell, Dartmouth, 21-6.) In the older part of the town, in what was first called Clifton, the houses cling in tiers to the side of the hill, giving the town its very picturesque appearance from the sea or the opposite shore.

FIG. 14-DARTMOUTH A sketch map of early Dartmouth showing the two ancient ridgeways running down to the waterside at Hardness and Clifton. The dotted line marks the present water- front (adapted from Russell, Dartmouth)

The importance of this magnificent, sheltered, deep-water harbour is brought out in the 12th century, when it was used as the point of assembly and departure for the Second Crusade (1147) and the Third Crusade (1190). There are clear indications that by 1200 or soon afterwards a borough had been formally created by the Fitz Stephens out of the casual assemblage of houses and shipyards which had grown up along both banks of the Mill Pool to meet the needs of military and commercial shipping using the river.

The earliest street of which we have any record in Dartmouth is Smith Street-"the street of the smiths," who were concerned with ship repairs. This originally lay along the water's edge, but later reclamation from the river, chiefly in the making of the New Quay from 1584 onwards, has left it some distance from the water today. As late as 1567 ships were still tied up to the churchyard wall of St. Saviour's, and the churchyard overlooked the harbour to the N. and E. (D.A. 82 (1950), 282.) On such a restricted site, the town was obliged to expand S. along the water-front, overflowing its own boundary into the manor of Stoke Fleming and creating the suburb still known as South town, which is first recorded by name in 1328. In 1463 Southtown was brought within the borough boundaries, so that the mayor and burgesses of Dartmouth "may keep watch at a certain place called Galions Boure to guard against our enemies."

The acquisition of the SW. provinces of France as a consequence of Henry II's marriage in 1152 gave a great stimulus to commercial and military traffic using Dartmouth, and it rose quickly to be the fourth town in Devon, after Exeter, Plymouth, and Barnstaple. (D.S., 223-5.) All the cloth trade of Totnes flowed out through Dartmouth; wine from France and Spain was the chief import. Of all the merchants and shipmasters of the medieval port, John Hawley was the greatest. Chaucer visited Dartmouth in 1373 on official business and certainly met Hawley, who is probably the Schip- man in the Canterbury Tales. After Hawley's death (1408) the port and town decayed sadly, partly because no one took his place as a leader and partly because of general economic and political conditions. (ibid., 231-2. The Fall of Bordeaux in 1453 hit Dartmouth's trade severely.)

The second great age in the history of the town fell in the period 1580-1643. Much building of this period remains and much more has been destroyed. In 1604 the town was formally incorporated, though it had elected its own mayor since 1340. (Watkins, Dartmouth, 38n.) The great prosperity of these two generations arose from the development of the Newfoundland fishing trade, in which Dartmouth played a leading part, and from the renewed growth of the cloth trade-now the " New Draperies "at Ashburton. Much ground was taken in from the river, a large new quay built, and valuable building sites created for the bursting town. ( D.A. 82 (1950), 281-90: The New Quay at Dartmouth 1584-1640.") Some of the buildings put up at this date may be seen in the Butterwalk ( 1635-40) and along the frontage of the Quay, where they are sometimes concealed by later facades (e.g. the Castle Hotel, 1639, refronted in 1823).

Dartmouth was the scene of a good deal of action in the Civil War. It was first garrisoned for parliament, but after the capture of Exeter on 4 September 1643 Prince Maurice marched on and took it after a costly siege lasting a month. The town surrendered to the royalists on 4 October. Being rightly regarded as an important garrison, the fortifications were considerably strengthened on both sides of the river. In the final campaign in the West, Fairfax laid siege to Dartmouth on 12 January 1646. On Sunday the 18th the town was stormed and fell.

With the collapse of the textile trade in the inland towns, and the disappearance of the Newfoundland trade, during the 18th century, Dartmouth stagnated as a port. It had been considered in 1689 as a possible site for the new western naval base that was required to meet the threat from France, but it was rejected in favour of Plymouth (or rather Dock, near by) mainly because of the hazards of the narrow entrance to the harbour. Similarly, in the 19th century it was hoped to make Dartmouth a terminus for the Atlantic and other over-seas shipping routes, but that, too, came to nothing. For a time, indeed, from 1871 to 1891 the Cape and Natal Steamship Co. took up passengers and mails here, and Dartmouth had fast and regular steamship services to South Africa and Australia. In 1891 the Co. moved to Southampton, however, to suit the convenience of the General Post Office. Moreover, as steamships grew larger, no wharf at Dartmouth could take them. ( Other shipping lines left Dartmouth alone because of its poor railway communication. The failure to bring the railway across the river at Greenway, and down the W. side of the Dart into Dartmouth itself, did untold damage to the town. From 1878 onwards the development of the coal bunkering trade did much to bring about a revival of the port. The heavy destruction of steamships in the 1914-18 war, and the conversion to oil fuel after it, nearly killed this trade. Today, with the further destruction of 1939-45, it is virtually gone. Dartmouth suffered fairly severely from air-raids in 1942-43, partly because of the shipbuilding yards up the river, partly because of the use of the harbour by war-shipping. The presence of the Royal Naval College built 1902-05 by Sir Aston Webb on a site dominating the harbour-no doubt helped to provoke enemy attention.

The stagnation of Dartmouth presents the most serious urban problem in Devon. The lack of proper railway facilities, and above all the strangulated site along the water's edge, discourage any large new industrial development, and the absence of beaches, golf-courses, and other amenities prevents its developing far as a holiday centre. It is an ideal centre for fishing and yachting, but these are select pastimes, and the town has become too largely dependent on the existence of the Royal Naval College. There are a number of small industries, of which shipbuilding is the most considerable.

Dartmouth was also a parliamentary borough. It returned members to the parliament of 1298, but its regular representation began in 1351 and continued until it was disfranchised in 1868." There is a good deal to see in the town. Beginning at the mouth of the river, the castle and St. Petrock's church make a most interesting and picturesque group. Edward III ordered special measures to be taken for the defence of the strategic port of Dartmouth against attack from the sea, but not until 1388 did John Hawley begin the building of afortalice at the entrance to the harbour. In 1481 the strong, square towel', ever since known as Dartmouth Castle, was begun. Most of the surviving work dates from 488-94. ("Dartmouth Castle and other Defences of Dartmouth Haven" in Archaeologia 85 (1935), 129-57.) On the other side of the harbour mouth, Kingswear Castle was begun in 1491 and finished in 1502 (Frontispiece).

St. Petrock's church, within the castle precinct, is on an ancient site. A record of 1192, referring to it as "the monastery of St. Peter," suggests that a nwnasterium or minster may have been established here in early Christian times. The present church was rebuilt in the Gothic style in 1641-2, and contains a pulpit, royal arms, and W. gallery of that date, and some fine brasses to Dartmouth merchants, especially that of John Roope (1609), who lived at Warfleet, an old house destroyed by the royalists in 1643. Before the altar is a floor-slab to John Newman of Dartmouth, merchant (1640), ancestor of Sir Ralph Newman, 5th bart., of Mamhead and Blackpool. The font is Norman (late 12th century).

Above the castle is a Civil War redoubt known as Gallants Bower. At Bayard's Cove are the considerable ruins of a castle built in 1537 as a part of Henry VIII's coastal defence scheme. Here is the Old Quay at which most of the town's medieval shipping lay. Near by is the Custom House, rebuilt in 1739, of which the Long Room has a good plaster ceiling. Many of the 16th to 18th century house at the S. end of the town, some of them splendid examples of merchants' houses, were swept away in 1864 to make Newcomen Road as a new exit from the town. Among the treasures that were demolished were the medieval house of the great John Hawley, long used as a guildhall, and the 17th century house where Thomas Newcomen (1663-1729) laboured to produce the first industrial steam engine, surely one of the historic houses of England. Newcomen was a Dartmouth man, an ironmonger by trade, and his fame is commemorated today by a modest memorial in a public park. Newcomen's claim to be the chief begetter of the practical steam engine is recognised to-day by the existence of the Newcomen Society, with members all over the English-speaking world. Of the 17th century houses that remain, those in the Butterwalk (damaged by bombs in 1943, but about to be restored) and on the new Quay, have already been referred to.

St. Saviour's church was dedicated in 1372. It was much altered in the late 15th century and extensively remodelled in the 1630s. The tower was raised in 1631, the N. aisle rebuilt 1634, the S. aisle in 1635. The magnificent W. gallery (1633) was made by local carpenters at a cost of £15, the royal arms beii1g added in 1660. Among the many interesting features of the church are the extremely handsome 15th century rood-screen, parclose screens, and stone pulpit. In the chancel are the brasses of John Hawley and his two wives (408) and Gilbert Staplehill (1637). In the gallery is an early town fire engine, of which the twin is now in the Science Museum at South Kensington. The S. door of the church is remarkable. It bears the date 1631, but the fine ironwork upon it is almost certainly of late 14th century date. It depicts a tree in full flower, with the trunk crossed by figures of two leopards.

In contrast to this exceptionally interesting church, the mother church of St. Clement at Townstall is dullish. It is mainly of 14th century date (dedicated in 1318), with some traces of Norman work and an early 13th century font, but was over-restored in the 19th century There are, however, some interesting monuments and memorials to the Roopes and the Boones (who lived at Mount Boone).