Tavistock

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Many thanks to Tavistock Rotary Club and The West Devon Club for facilitating this camera's location and to the Westcountry Rivers Trust for capitally funding its installation. Tavistock is a market town in West Devon on the River Tavy, from which its name derives, It traces its history back at least to AD 961, when Tavistock Abbey, whose ruins lie in the centre of the town, was founded. Its most famous son is Sir Francis Drake The Tavy is a Salmon and Sea Trout river which rises high on Dartmoor and flows through Tavistock to its junction with the Tamar estuary north of Plymouth. Our webcam is on the Abbey Wall over looking Abbey Bridge. The area around Tavistock (formerly Tavistoke), where the River Tavy runs wide and shallow allowing it to be easily crossed, and near the secure high ground of Dartmoor, was inhabited long before the historical record. The surrounding area is littered with archaeological remains from the Bronze and Iron Ages and it is believed a hamlet existed on the site of the present town long before the town's official history began, with the founding of the Abbey.