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“Well, fancy that!”
Think you know Devon? Whether it’s the oldest, newest, narrowest, longest or just plain quirkiest, the county can lay claim to some interesting world and country records. Here are our favourite ‘Top 10’ amazing facts about our amazing county.
Devon...has the only place in the country with an exclamation in its name! The seaside village of Westward Ho! was named after the 1855 Charles Kingsley novel of the same name, set in nearby Bideford. Canny local tourism entrepreneurs spotted the marketing potential of naming the village after a bestselling novel, evoking the spirit of the wild, beautiful and rugged north Devon coastline. It is also thought to be the only place in the country named after a work of fiction.
Devon...has the country’s only 16-sided house In 1784, Jane Parminter, intrepid daughter of a wealthy Devon wine merchant, set off on a grand tour of Europe accompanied by her sister Elizabeth, cousin Mary and their friend Miss Colville. On their return, and supposedly inspired by a 6th century Byzantine basilica in Ravenna, spinsters Mary and Jane commissioned A La Ronde near Exmouth, the only 16-sided house in the country. With a passion for design and collecting, the interior is as unique and eclectic as the building itself, complete with a frieze made from real birds’ feathers and, perhaps most famously, a shell-encrusted gallery containing nearly 25,000 shells.
Devon...is home to the UK’s oldest human Kents Cavern in Torquay can be rightly proud of the Kents Cavern Jawbone, found in the Vestibule Chamber in 1927 as it is the earliest evidence of Homo sapiens or modern man found in the whole of Britain and north-west Europe, and is thought to date to around 42,000 years ago. Not only does this make it one of the most important prehistoric caves in Europe, but it also holds the accolade for being the only known site in the world that has evidence of three different human species - Homo Heidelbergensis, Neanderthals and Homo sapiens - occupying it throughout time, giving it a connection to humankind dating back over half a million years.
Devon...Is the home of the last castle ever built in England Showing appearances can be deceptive, despite looking every inch the archetypal medieval castle, Castle Drogo actually dates from the 1930s and is the last castle ever to be built in England. In 1910, businessman Julius Drewe bought about 450 acres south and west of the village of Drewsteignton and asked Edwin Lutyens to build him a castle. The castle’s traditional ‘defensives’ are purely decorative and it had all the mod cons available at the time, with electricity supplied by two turbines from the river below, and even lifts!
Devon...has more roads than anywhere else in the whole country – and probably the slowest! Perhaps not a surprise to anyone who drives around the county,
