Barnstaple
Barnstaple spent four hundred years getting rich on wool and then watched its own harbour fill up with mud, which is the most Devon way imaginable to lose an empire. What survives is a town that still behaves like the capital of somewhere, because for everyone north of the link road it genuinely is: the hospital, the college, the retail parks, the Wednesday queue for the pannier market. The castle is a grassy lump with nothing on it, the priory is gone, the railway got cut back to a single branch line, and none of this troubles anyone, because Barnstaple long ago made peace with being useful rather than admired. People move here for the beaches at Saunton and Croyde and then discover they live twenty minutes inland next to a Homebase.
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Data to May 2026 · Figures checked 20 August 2026 (what this means)