This camera was installed and is maintained by the Environment Agency and can be viewed
here. All content is available under the
Open Government Licence v3.0. The usual range of the River Exe at Thorverton is between 0.23m and 2.00m. It has been between these levels for 90% of the time since monitoring began. The typical recent level of the River Exe at Thorverton over the past 12 months has been between 0.26m and 1.78m. It has been between these levels for at least 150 days in the past year. The highest level ever recorded at the River Exe at Thorverton is 3.64m, reached on Sunday 4th December 1960 at 4:00pm. The name of Thorverton may be Scandinavian in origin and the village might have been named after its founder. Old records mention the parish as Toruerton in 1182. In 1340 the parish was called Thorferton. Other sources believe that the name is an ancient reference to a thorn-bush besides a river crossing. There was briefly a small settlement here during Roman times, perched on a hill overlooking a fording point across the River Exe (near to the current day bridge and webcam location), a key crossing for the military garrisoned at Exeter (Isca Dumnoniorum). There is no evidence however to suggest that there was a settlement here by the time of the Domesday Book in 1086, although Thorverton Mill was running at this time on the River Exe (and continued to do so until its closure in 1979). (Raddon, a hamlet 1-mile west of Thorverton is mentioned in the Domesday book. 'William holds RADDON (in Thorverton) from the abbott. Wulfmaer held it in TRE, and it paid geld for 1 virgate of land. There is land for 2 ploughs. There is 1 villan with half a plough and 1 slave and 13 acres of meadow and 50 acres of pasture. It is worth 5s”. The very centre of the village is The Bury, which is likely to be the oldest part of the village. After the Anglo-Saxon conquest, Thorverton became a military plantation. The Bury today still forms a wide rectangle - a stockade from the natives based in nearby Cadbury. It could house all the cattle until the crisis passed. Over time, the space became more commonly used for cattle trading. The earliest such indication of a market comes from a charter for a fair in 1250 for 'Thormerton'.
