Qualla: Ashburton, Devon

Ashburton, Devon: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1989, the people of Ashburton elected a local publican named Alan Hope to their town council. Hope ran on the ticket of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, a deliberately absurd political party founded by the rock-and-roll candidate Screaming Lord Sutch. Hope won unopposed, became deputy mayor, then mayor. He was the first Loony to hold any public office in Britain. The voters of Ashburton, a small Devon town that has been doing things its own way since the Domesday Book, did not seem to find this remarkable. They had elected a publican who happened to wear a tie. That his party officially included sea monsters and the abolition of January was beside the point.

Read more: Ashburton, Devon on Qualla

Ashburton, Devon: Tin, Wool, and Ash Trees

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The town's name itself is a landscape description in Old English: aesc-burna-tun, the settlement by the stream where ash trees grow. It was recorded as Essebretone in the Domesday Book of 1086. For most of the Middle Ages Ashburton was a stannary town - one of only four in Devon ...

Read more: Ashburton, Devon on Qualla

Ashburton, Devon: The Lost Recipe

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Sometime in the 17th or 18th century, an Ashburton brewer was making something he called Ashburton Pop - a sparkling beverage, possibly a kind of champagne-style fermented drink, that was famous well beyond the town. People wrote about it. Visitors asked for it. The corks were ce...

Read more: Ashburton, Devon on Qualla

Ashburton, Devon: Civil War Refuge

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In January 1646, after Oliver Cromwell's cavalry surprised and routed the Royalist camp at nearby Bovey Heath, the defeated Royalists fled south through Devon. Ashburton became a temporary refuge for some of them. It was a brief military moment - the Parliamentary army of Sir Tho...

Read more: Ashburton, Devon on Qualla

Ashburton, Devon: Carnival, Carpenters, and a Democratic School

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Ashburton Carnival is one of the oldest in Devon and possibly the oldest still running, with written records back to 1891 and an origin in the mid-1880s when it was started to raise funds for a new town hospital. The carnival still happens every year. The town still annually appo...

Read more: Ashburton, Devon on Qualla