Plymouth Cycling Club

Old Tavistock Road

Turnpikes, tolls and the roads that traffic left behind

The lanes around Horrabridge, Whitchurch, Moorshop and Tavistock can seem surprisingly minor today. Yet their bends, junctions, bridges and roadside stones preserve the remains of a road system which developed when travel between Plymouth and Tavistock depended on routes very different from the modern A386. This ride is therefore a journey through the history of road transport as well as through the western Dartmoor landscape.

Before the turnpikes

For centuries the road north from Plymouth approached Tavistock through Horrabridge, Sortridge and Whitchurch. Horrabridge itself was an important crossing of the River Walkham. There was a bridge here by the fourteenth century, and the narrow stone bridge which survives today reflects the importance of this crossing long before modern road engineering transformed the route.

Road maintenance was originally a local responsibility. That arrangement became increasingly unsatisfactory as long-distance traffic grew: parishes could find themselves maintaining roads for travellers who were merely passing through. The turnpike system offered another solution. Trustees were empowered by Parliament to improve specified roads and finance the work by charging tolls at gates and bars.

The Tavistock Turnpike Trust

The Tavistock Turnpike Trust was established in 1762. The old road towards Plymouth formed part of its network, and contemporary descriptions trace the route from Tavistock through Whitchurch and Sortridge towards Horrabridge. Travellers, carts, livestock and coaches using turnpike roads could be charged according to schedules of tolls, the money being used to maintain and improve the roads.

The result was not a completely new road network. Turnpike trusts frequently adopted existing roads and improved them, so older routes survived within the new system. This helps explain why apparently insignificant lanes around Whitchurch and Moorshop contain roadside evidence of their former importance.

1822: the road moves

The decisive change came in 1822. A new road was opened across Roborough Down and a new bridge was constructed across the Walkham downstream from the old Horrabridge crossing. Officially named Bedford Bridge, after the Duke of Bedford, it became widely known as Magpie Bridge.

The new crossing allowed through traffic to bypass the older route through Horrabridge and Whitchurch. The line established by these improvements became the main Plymouth– Tavistock corridor and is substantially represented today by the A386. What had been important through roads consequently became local roads. The change is still visible on the ground: modern traffic follows the broad main-road corridor while cyclists can use parts of the earlier network on lanes carrying only a fraction of their former traffic.

Warren’s Cross and Moorshop

Around Moorshop the older pattern of movement remains particularly easy to recognise. Warren’s Cross was a junction from which roads led towards Horrabridge, Sampford Spiney, Moorshop and Tavistock. A rough granite direction stone survives there, built into a wall and bearing the incised letters “TA”. The Devon Historic Environment Record identifies it as a direction stone and suggests that the surviving block may be part of a larger stone which was split lengthways.

Such stones belonged to an age when a traveller approaching a rural junction could not rely on road numbers, large signs or satellite navigation. A few letters cut into granite were sufficient to indicate the road towards the next important town.

Milestones to Plymouth

Milestones provide another surviving layer of the old road system. A granite milestone on the former route near Pennycomequick, for example, is recorded by the Devon Historic Environment Record as having been erected by the Tavistock Turnpike Trust around 1832. Its inscription reads “13 Miles To Plymo”.

These stones did more than reassure travellers that they were heading in the right direction. Distances mattered to the operation of turnpikes, postal services, coaching and commercial transport. Today the stones can look like isolated antiquities beside minor roads; originally they belonged to a working transport network.

The railway and the end of the turnpike age

The road system changed again when the railway reached Tavistock from Plymouth in 1859. Railways could move passengers and goods faster and in greater quantities than horse-drawn road transport. The turnpike road consequently lost much of the long-distance traffic which had justified its development. Records indicate that the toll houses at Horrabridge and Grenofen were eventually sold in 1882.

Roads, however, rarely disappear simply because their function changes. The old routes continued to serve farms, villages and local journeys. Their survival is what makes this ride interesting today. A cyclist can move between successive generations of transport history: medieval crossings, eighteenth-century turnpikes, the 1822 road improvements and the modern A386 all occupy the same relatively small landscape.

Seeing the old road from a bicycle

Cycling is particularly well suited to understanding this landscape. At bicycle speed, junctions, gradients, bridges, milestones and direction stones become conspicuous. The steepness of a lane also gives some idea of the difficulties faced by horses hauling loaded carts before engineers began designing roads with easier gradients and more direct crossings.

The Old Tavistock Road ride therefore follows more than a collection of attractive Devon lanes. It traces the remains of a transport system which once carried travellers between Plymouth and Tavistock, and shows how the construction of one bridge and a better road could alter the geography of movement so thoroughly that a former main route could become the minor-road network enjoyed by cyclists two centuries later.

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