6 of the Best Historic Market Towns in East and Mid Devon to Visit
- Martin Hesp
- 2 hours ago
- 7 min read
East and Mid Devon are defined by fertile valleys, ancient trade routes, and distinctive red soils. Rather than mere dormitory stops or tourist caricatures, the market settlements scattered along the Axe, Otter, Exe, and Culm valleys retain a stubborn, working individuality. From world-renowned craft capitals to forgotten river-junctions, here are five historic Devon market towns well worth pulling off the highway to explore.
1. Honiton: The Grandest Highway Town of the West
As a rule, highway towns are dismal places—dusty, one-horse dorps where residents peer bleakly from behind perma-grimed windowpanes and where gaudy hoardings attempt the impossible task of halting traffic bent on speeding right on through. Honiton is the glorious exception to this rule. It is a roadside burgh par excellence, dominated by a great, sweeping High Street so wide and handsome that travellers have happily pulled over to admire its charms for centuries.
The street market still takes over the broad thoroughfare twice weekly, as it has done for well over 700 years. But Honiton is equally celebrated as both the antiques capital of the South West and the historic world capital of handmade bobbin lace. In the nineteenth century, the American writer Elihu Burritt observed with poignancy how the gossamer-fine finery worn by queens on their coronation days was wrought by the weary, worn fingers of women toiling on the cold clay floors of damp cottages. You can explore this extraordinary legacy at the Allhallows Museum beside St Paul’s Church.
Curiously, Honiton has repeatedly risen from the ashes. Devastating blazes—most notably the conflagration of 1765, which gutted 115 homes and melted the church bells—reshaped the architecture, leaving the wide, Georgian-fronted streetscape enjoyed today.
Honiton Fact File
Market Days: Tuesday and Saturday (held along the High Street).
Key Landmarks: Allhallows Museum of Lace and Local Antiquities, St Paul's Church, and the cluster of independent antique emporiums.
Curiosity: The annual Hot Penny Ceremony, where warm coins are scattered from pub balconies to mark the opening of the fair—a centuries-old custom once held to inaugurate a week free from petty arrests.
2. Axminster: Ancient Minster, Famous Weaves
Tucked into the lovely Axe Vale near the Dorset border, Axminster is an ancient, self-contained community mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as early as 786 AD. It hums with life from its very centre, where market stalls cluster on Minster Green directly against the stone walls of the great church, continuing a tradition that dates back to the town’s first royal charter in 1210.
The Minster church of St Mary the Virgin lords it over the surrounding pastoral vale. The churchyard saw bloody skirmishes during the English Civil War in 1644 when Parliamentary forces from Lyme Regis besieged Royalist troops holed up in the bell tower, setting fire to surrounding houses when they failed to dislodge them.
Naturally, you cannot walk through Axminster without encountering carpets. The world-famous local industry was founded in 1755 by Thomas Whitty, who hand-wove his first carpet here. In those early days, the weaving process was so intricate and labour-intensive that the completion of a single carpet was celebrated with a full peal of the Minster bells. The prestigious weaves went on to cover floors in royal palaces, grand auditoriums, and stately homes across the globe.
Just outside Axminster you can find the famous River Cottage of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall fame.
Axminster Fact File
Market Day: Thursday (held around the Minster and Trinity Square).
Key Landmarks: The Minster Church of St Mary the Virgin and the Axminster Heritage Centre (housed in Thomas Whitty's original carpet factory).
Curiosity: Legend tells that King Athelstan founded a college of priests at the Minster to pray for the souls of seven earls slain in ancient Saxon battle.
3. Tiverton: Two Rivers and Industrial Might
Tiverton carries an atmospheric air unlike almost anywhere else in the West Country. Dominated by the vast brick facade of Heathcoat’s factory, it feels delightfully akin to a northern mill town magically transported to the rolling red hills of Devon. Look down across the town from the grandiose National Trust gardens at Knightshayes and you see the terraces built for craftsmen who, in 1816, actually walked 200 miles from Loughborough alongside industrialist John Heathcoat after their Leicestershire lace machines were wrecked by Luddites.
Yet Tiverton’s importance stretches back far earlier. Originally 'Twi-ford' (signifying two fords over the Exe and the Lowman), the town was anchored by its Norman castle, established above the river escarpment after 1100 AD by Richard de Redvers. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Tiverton became the West Country’s premier trading centre for wool and cloth. The immense wealth of its cloth merchants is immortalised in the carvings of St Peter’s Church, where merchant John Greenway had effigies of his sea-going merchant fleet sculpted directly onto his chantry chapel.
Today, the town remains an authentic agricultural hub. The bustling Pannier Market operates beneath historic arches, while the exceptional Tiverton Museum of Mid Devon Life houses an astonishing collection of local transport, agricultural implements, and the beloved steam engine The Tivvy Bumper.
Tiverton Fact File
Market Days: Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday (at the Pannier Market).
Key Landmarks: Tiverton Pannier Market, St Peter’s Church, Tiverton Castle, and the Mid Devon Life Museum.
Curiosity: Down Castle Street runs the Town Leat, gifted to the townsfolk in 1250 by Isabella, Countess of Devon. Every seven years, the ancient stream's boundary is walked by the mayor to re-affirm public ownership of the water.
4. Cullompton: The Perpendicular Beacon of the Culm Valley
Travellers roaring down the six-lane strip of the M5 between Taunton and Exeter often glance across at Cullompton’s red-brick roofs without realising the sheer architectural pedigree tucked behind the slip road. Mentioned in King Alfred the Great’s will in 872 AD as Columtune, this fertile valley hub has always sat astride the primary arterial route down the spine of the South West peninsula.
Its pride and joy is St Andrew’s Church, which possesses one of the finest church towers in all of Devon, soaring 120 feet into the mid-Devon sky. Step inside its cool sanctuary and you are confronted with a breathtaking painted rood-screen and the extraordinary stone-vaulted Lane Aisle, erected in 1526 by prosperous wool merchant John Lane. Near the aisle rests a rare and forbidding relic: an ancient, dark carved-oak Golgotha, studded with sinister skulls that once formed the base of a medieval crucifixion tableau.
Outside the churchyard, the wide street spaces of the Higher and Lower Bull Rings speak to centuries of lively market trading. Down the main street stands The Walronds, a splendid Elizabethan merchant's town house dating to 1603 with fine timber framing.
Cullompton Fact File
Key Landmarks: St Andrew’s Church (notably the Lane Aisle and medieval Golgotha) and The Walronds on Fore Street.
Landscape: The Culm Valley walking routes and old mill leat paths.
Curiosity: The original drinking watercourse that supplied the town was constructed by monks from Buckland Monachorum in 1356. While culverted over in the 1960s, its winding route is still marked by a line of blue paving stones through the Higher Bull Ring.
5. Bampton: The Untroubled Exmoor Border Haven
If you wish to see Devon at its most peaceful and self-possessed, head into the hills above the River Batherm to Bampton. Completely bypassed by modern dual carriageways, Bampton sits deep in its hollow just south of the Somerset border, refreshingly untroubled by commercial frenzy.
Centuries ago, this was a vital crossroad where the old north-south Exe Valley trade route met the ancient trackway from Taunton to Barnstaple. Norman conquerors set their steep motte-and-bailey castle atop an older Saxon earthwork—a beech-crowned knoll that overlooks the stone-built settlement to this day.
Though devastatingly torched for four days during the Civil War by Royalist troops attacking local Devon Clubmen, Bampton rebuilt its fortunes on sheep and stone. The town once had its own distinct breed—the polled Bampton Nott—and its great limestone quarries once supplied hard stone for roads, buildings, and airfields across the West Country. While the daily livestock markets have faded into history, the celebrated annual Bampton Fair—dating back to a charter granted in 1258—still draws visitors from across Exmoor and beyond.
Bampton Fact File
Key Landmarks: St Michael and All Angels Church, the Norman motte knoll, and the stone toll-houses on the old turnpike routes.
Annual Highlight: The historic Bampton Fair, held every October.
Curiosity: Hidden in a quiet garden down from the inn is a historic chalybeate spring. In the late nineteenth century, entrepreneurial locals tried to bottle and market Bampton's mineral water as a spa remedy, though sceptical villagers complained the iron-rich water looked like liquid rust.
6. Crediton: Red Sandstone and the Devon Cathedral
There is something about Crediton that is purely Devonian. It sits snug in the low, rolling farmland with the dark granite ramparts of Dartmoor looming as a dramatic, distant backdrop. For centuries, farmers poured in from the surrounding hills to trade in the long High Street, but it was kersey—a coarse cloth woven from short-stapled wool—that brought serious mercantile wealth to the town.
That wool wealth poured straight into Crediton’s crowning glory: the Parish Church of the Holy Cross. Built from rich, warm red sandstone—the very colour of Devon itself—it has all the scale, grandeur, and presence of a regional cathedral. A monastery was founded at ‘Credie’ as early as 739 AD, and two centuries later Crediton was chosen as the See of the first Bishop of Devon and Cornwall. Had Bishop Leofric not transferred the See down to the more easily defended city of Exeter in 1050, Crediton might well have become the county capital. When Henry VIII dissolved the collegiate foundations in 1547, the proud townspeople clubbed together and bought their beloved church back from the Crown for £200.
Like Honiton, Crediton has suffered disastrously from flames. The Great Fire of 1743 destroyed 460 homes, killed 14 people, and left thousands destitute. But the town possesses an enduring resilience. While the historic pannier market was demolished in the 1960s, the community revitalised its core by transforming the old Market Street area into an open Town Square. Today, it provides a vibrant focal point off the busy thoroughfare for community events and an award-winning farmers' market.
Crediton Fact File
Market Days: Crediton Farmers' Market is held on the 1st and 3rd Saturday of every month in the Town Square, accompanied by regular artisan stalls.
Key Landmarks: The Collegiate Church of the Holy Cross, the Town Square, and the historic High Street.
Famous Sons: St Boniface (born Winfrith in Crediton c. 680 AD), the renowned missionary and Patron Saint of Europe, and Labour Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin.
Curiosity: The locals are traditionally known as Kertonians (derived from 'Kirton', the ancient vernacular name for the town). After the wool trade shifted north, Kertonians earned a regional reputation for master leathercraft and bootmaking.
