Crapstone
| Crapstone | |
| Devon | |
|---|---|
 Street in Crapstone | |
| Location | |
| Location: | 50°29’26"N, 4°6’43"W |
| Data | |
| Postcode: | PL20 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | West Devon |
Crapstone is a village in south-western Devon, standing at the edge of Dartmoor, about a mile from Yelverton. To the west is Buckland Monachorum (to which civil parish Crapstone is attached) and Drake's great mansion, Buckland Abbey, is just a mile south-westwards.
Plymouth is nine miles to the south and Tavistock five miles to the north.
History
During the Second World War Crapstone was the nearest village to RAF Harrowbeer. Members of the RAF crew were housed in the nearby villages of Crapstone, Yelverton and Buckland Monachorum. The Ministry of Defence maintained a defence site in Crapstone until the 1980s when the site was cleared and converted for residential use. [1]
In 2007 Crapstone was used as the name of the village in a television advert for the RAC.[2] Local residents started a protest group on the social networking site Facebook complaining that the village used in the television advert was not actually Crapstone but a location using its name.[3]
As a child, the journalist Christopher Hitchens lived for some years in the village, and noted his embarrassment at the name in his autobiography, as well as in the pages of Vanity Fair.[4] It has frequently been noted on lists of unusual place names.[5]
Outside links
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("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Crapstone) |
References
- ↑ Dispersed Sites: RAF Harrowbeare, Yelverton
- ↑ "RAC - Crapstone". http://www.tellyads.com/play_advert/?filename=TA4278&type=recent. Retrieved 2 November 2016.
- ↑ 'What's in a name? Britain's rudest places' - Jonathan Christie in The Independent 20 May 2008
- ↑ Hitchens, Christopher: England Made Them - Vanity Fair
- ↑ 'No Snickering: That Road Sign Means Something Else' - Sarah Lyall in The New York Times 22 January 2009
