•  Ivybridge, Devon

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In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Ivybridge like this:

IVY-BRIDGE, a village and a chapelry in Cornwood, Ermington, Harford, and Ugborough parishes, Devon. The village stands on the river Erme, in a romantic dell, under a hill 1, 130 feet high, adjacent to the South Devon railway, near the S border of Dartmoor, 11 miles E by N of Plymouth; takes its name from an ancient onearched bridge, formerly embowered in ivy; and has a head post office, ‡ a railway station, with telegraph, several good inns and lodging houses, a church of 1790, three dissenting chapels, a mechanics' institute, a national school, and several paper and flour mills.—The chapelry was constituted in 1836. ...

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Pop. in 1851, 1, 348. Houses, 261. Pop. of the Ermington portion, 1, 024. Houses, 195. The living is a p. curacy in the diocese of Exeter. Value, not reported. Patron, alternately Lady Rogers and W. Cotton, Esq. The scenery, particularly along the coast of the Erme, is highly picturesque. Warner, in his Cornish Tour, says respecting it, -"However warmed my fancy might have been by previous descriptions of the beauties of the river at Ivy-Bridge, the actual scene would have realized its most romantic dreams. I confessed that I never before had seen so much variety crowded into so short a distance:-

Here might Contemplation imp
Her eagle plumes ! The Poet here night hold
Sweet converse with the Muse ! The curious sage,
Who comments on great Nature's ample tome,
Might find that volume here. For here are caves
Where rise those gurgling rills, that sing the song
Which contemplation loves. Here shadowy glades,
Where, through the tremulous foliage, darts the ray
That gilds the Poet's day dream.

Ivybridge through time

Ivybridge is now part of South Hams district. Click here for graphs and data of how South Hams has changed over two centuries. For statistics about Ivybridge itself, go to Units and Statistics.

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