[CHAPTER XIV.]
ASHBURTON
Ashburton manors—The Ashburn—The cloth-workers—The tucking-mills—County families sprung from the woollen trade—Introduction of machinery—John Dunning—Created Baron Ashburton—Wood-carving in Ashburton—The Oldham owl—Screen destroyed—Ilsington—The Pomeroys—Holne—Dean Prior and Herrick—Abbey of Buckfast—A foundation of S. Petrock—Staverton Church—Screens in Devon—Dr. Blackall's Drive—Holne Chase—Bovey Tracey—William de Tracy—Chudleigh.
A pleasant, sleepy, country town, hardly able to maintain its old-world dignity against the ruffling, modern, manufacturing Buckfastleigh. A pleasant centre, whence delightful excursions may be made, and with an old-world aroma about it, as though preserved in pot-pourri.
It has a beautiful church. Ashburton consisted of a royal and an episcopal manor, each with its several municipal officers. A stream divided the manors. Ashburton is the tun on the Ashburn. Ash is but another form of Exe, from usk, water. It owed its growth and prosperity to the wool trade. The proximity to Dartmoor, an unrivalled run for sheep, and the water of the stream to turn the mills, gave to Ashburton a great significance as a centre of cloth manufacture. Added to which it was a stannary town.
The old chapel of S. Laurence in the town, now converted into a grammar school, belonged to the guild of the cloth-workers, and their seal became the arms of the borough: On a mount vert, a chapel with spire, in dexter chief the sun in splendour, in sinister a crescent moon, in dexter base a teasel, in sinister a saltire. The teasel and sun and moon were emblematical of the chief staples of the place; the woollen trade and the mining interests.
The old fulling-mills were locally termed tucking-mills, and the extent to which cloth-working was carried on in South Devon is shown by the prevalence of the surname Tucker.[29]
The process of manufacture given by Westcote, in 1630, is as follows:—