Qualla: Modbury https://qualla.com/modbury en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:11 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/n/modbury-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Modbury https://qualla.com/modbury Modbury: Introduction https://qualla.com/modbury/ Photo credit Michael Dibb, CC BY-SA 2.0. In April 2007, Modbury did something no town in Europe had done before: it banned the plastic bag. All forty-three of its shopkeepers agreed, simultaneously, to stop handing out single-use plastic at the till. The news travelled in ways the town did not expect. Reporters arrived from London, then from Australia, then from anywhere with a printing press. Within months, communities from Ilam in Staffordshire to Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire were trying to copy the experiment. For a place of roughly 1,500 people on a quiet ridge between Plymouth and Kingsbridge, it was a strange kind of fame. It was also entirely in character. Modbury has been doing things first since 1199, when the lord of the manor was granted the right to hold a weekly market. That charter has never lapsed.

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Image: Michael Dibb | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/n/modbury-wp/gbvn-modbury-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Modbury: From Mud or Meeting https://qualla.com/modbury/ Photo credit David Smith, CC BY-SA 2.0. The name is Anglo-Saxon and slightly ambiguous. Moot burgh means either "meeting fortified-place" or "mud fortified-place," and scholars have argued both ways. The Domesday Book of 1086 records the settlement as Motbilie, one of the holdings of Robert, Count of Mortain, half-brot...

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Image: David Smith | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/n/modbury-wp/gbvn-modbury-from-mud-or-meeting.mp3 0:06 2 full Modbury: St George's Spire https://qualla.com/modbury/ Photo credit Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0. The parish Church of St George is Grade I listed and largely fourteenth century, built of coursed rubble dressed with granite from the moor. Its broach spire was struck by lightning in 1621 and rebuilt as a careful copy of the original, and the nave and aisles still wear their wa...

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Image: Dietmar Rabich | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/n/modbury-wp/gbvn-modbury-st-georges-spire.mp3 0:06 3 full Modbury: The Governess Who Made a Queen https://qualla.com/modbury/ Photo credit Derek Harper, CC BY-SA 2.0. Katherine Champernowne was born in or near Modbury in the early sixteenth century, the daughter of a prominent local family. As a young woman she entered the household of Anne Boleyn, and after Anne's execution she was appointed governess to the four-year-old princess who would b...

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Image: Derek Harper | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/n/modbury-wp/gbvn-modbury-the-governess-who-made-a-queen.mp3 0:06 4 full Modbury: Savery's Engine https://qualla.com/modbury/ Photo credit Derek Harper, CC BY-SA 2.0. Thomas Savery was born around 1650 at Shilstone, the Georgian manor just outside the village, into a family whose members included Members of Parliament and prosperous farmer-traders. He grew up to become a military engineer and an inventor, and in 1698 he patented a device he ca...

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Image: Derek Harper | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/n/modbury-wp/gbvn-modbury-saverys-engine.mp3 0:06 5 full Modbury: Manor Houses and Long Memory https://qualla.com/modbury/ Photo credit Derek Harper, CC BY-SA 2.0. Modbury's parish keeps several historic seats worth noting. Shilstone Manor, where Savery was born, was restored in the early 2000s after decades of dereliction; it won Country Life's Restoration of the Century award and the historic gardens have been brought back as well. Wympst...

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Image: Derek Harper | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/n/modbury-wp/gbvn-modbury-manor-houses-and-long-memory.mp3 0:06 6 full