Exploring » Dartmouth
Discover Dartmouth - a town for all seasons.
Imagine steeply wooded hills dropping down to meet a running river where sailboats and brightly coloured trawlers bob at anchor. Ferries bustle back and forth, seawards you glimpse a cliff top church in the shadow of a protective castle and upstream the majestic Britannia Royal Naval College stands guard over the pretty town. On the opposite bank a steam train puffs its way alongside the sparkling river and over all reigns an atmosphere of quintessentially English eccentricity and elegance...Welcome to Dartmouth and its sister village of Kingswear.
As its name suggests the town sits along the majestic River Dart and it is this beautiful stretch of water that is the soul of Dartmouth. Earliest times saw the town as a simple settlement at the top of Townstal, high above the muddy river bank. The 11th century found two small fishing villages, Hardness and Clifton, clinging perilously to the steep ground above the tide line. Since that time inlets have been dammed, ground re-claimed and wharves and warehouses built to accommodate the exotic goods imported by the town’s wealthy fleet of merchant ships from Europe and across the Atlantic.
Dartmouth became a haunt for privateers with our very own pirate Thomas Norton and a family of pirate Lords, the Hawleys who stole from the French and Spanish whilst cheerfully acting as the towns M.P.s and Mayors! Chaucer immortalised his friend John Hawley in his Canterbury Tales as the Schipman of Dertemouthe - a thief, fighter and murderer of enemy sailors but an expert in seamanship! The town itself was kept safe from marauding invaders with the building of Dartmouth Castle when chains were run across the river to Godmerock.
Sir Humphrey Gilbert and John Davis left on their perilous voyages of discovery from Dartmouth whilst Sir Walter Raleigh brought his captured Spanish treasure ships back here! Famously this is also the harbour that the Pilgrim Fathers sailed from in 1620 when they set sail in the ‘Mayflower’ for the Americas.
The Naval College was first established here in 1863 with the ships ‘Britannia’ and ‘Hindustan’ moored off Sandquay whilst the shore based Britannia Royal Naval College was opened in 1905.
More recently the town sheltered every type of naval craft during the Second World War before the invasion and 480 vessels sailed for the beaches of Normandy in 1944.
You can re-live this unique seafaring history by exploring streets with such intriguing names as Jawbones, Flagon Steps, Damnation Alley, Undercliff, Kings Quay, Old Rope Walk and Waterpool Lane. You’ll stumble across quaint, quirky buildings like the Ship In Dock, Sloping Deck, The Captain’s House, The Windjammer and The Floating Bridge - all now places to eat, drink or sleep! The Butterwalk with its host of mythological beasties was built with timbers from captured ships.
Other famous sons have modern memorials– John Flavel, a deeply religious and community loving man whose name is now immortalised in the new Flavel Centre housing cinema, theatre, cafe, library, internet suite studios and an open gallery for aspiring and professional artists. In the Tourist Information Centre you can view an original atmospheric beam engine, invented here by Thomas Newcomen to pump water out of mines and thus helping the start of the Industrial Revolution.
Dartmouth is truly a magical place - a mad hotch potch of architectural styles with creatures of myth, filled with a cornucopeia of artistic talent, bursting with English eccentricity. A town where history is alive, where shops are unique, charming, quirky and individual, where organic and local produce is proudly represented by a host of top quality restaurants and cafes, where a warm welcome is offered by those who will host your stay and a place where every pub holds out a hand of greeting. Dartmouth is a town where folk still take time to stand in the park and chat, sip a coffee on the sunny embankment or laze under the cherry trees and listen to music from the bandstand.
Come and DiscoverDartmouth.
