Milton Abbot
| Milton Abbot | |
| Devon | |
|---|---|
 St Constantine and St Aegideus, Milton Abbot | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | SX406793 |
| Location: | 50°35’31"N, 4°15’11"W |
| Data | |
| Post town: | Tavistock |
| Postcode: | PL19 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | West Devon |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
Torridge and West Devon |
Milton Abbot is a small village in the west of Devon, about six miles north-west of Tavistock, and six miles south-east of Launceston, across the river in Cornwall. Milton Abbot is on the road from Tavistock to Launceston, which here is the B3362, the road crossing the River Tamar into Cornwall by the ancient Greystone Bridge.
The village is dominated by its tall church, in the solid granite-built style typical of the Dartmoor villages. Near the village is Endsleigh House, now a hotel and restaurant.
History
The manor of MIDDELTONE was donated at some time before the Norman Conquest of 1066 (according to the Devon historian Tristram Risdon (d.1640) by "a knight that dwelt in Daversweek"[1]) to Tavistock Abbey, whose ownership of the manor is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086. Ownership by the Abbots of Tavistock is the reason for the suffix of the village's name. It was the Abbey which built the Greystone Bridge linking Milton Abbot with Cornwall.
Following the Dissolution of the Monasteries, Milton Abbot along with most of the Abbey's extensive possessions, was acquired by John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford (c.1485-1554/5),[2] who had been appointed Lord Lieutenant of Devon by King Henry VIII.
In the parish is Endsleigh Cottage, built between 1810 and 1816 by John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford as a private family residence, to the designs of Sir Jeffry Wyatville, in the style of the picturesque movement, a grand form of the cottage orné. It is now a hotel.
The estate of Edgcumbe, situated within the parish, was the original English seat of the Edgcumbe family (originally de Edgecumbe), a branch of which was created Earl of Mount Edgcumbe in 1789, seated at Mount Edgcumbe House in Cornwall.