Okehampton

Okehampton is a town and civil parish, situated at the northern edge of Dartmoor, Devon.

The town was founded by the Saxons. The earliest written record of the settlement is from 980 AD as Ocmundtune, meaning settlement by the Okement, a river which runs through the town. It was recorded as a place for slaves to be freed at cross roads.

Okehampton grew in size due to the medieval wool trade. It was the caput, the centre of administration of a large feudal barony, which at the time of the Domesday Book was held by Baldwin FitzGilbert. The tenure of the barony is obscure for the twenty years following his death in 1090. After that it was held by the heiress Maud d'Avranches until her death in 1173, and then passed to her daughter, Hawise de Curci, who married Reginald de Courtenay. His French possessions were confiscated by the French King Louis VII, but were given, together with the marriage of his daughter Elizabeth de Courtenay, to his youngest brother Peter I of Courtenay. The Courtenay family rebuilt Okehampton Castle, until King Henry VIII seized the lands and had Henry Courtenay, 1st Marquess of Exeter executed for treason in 1539.

There is a large army training camp on Dartmoor which can be reached via Okehampton, known as Okehampton Camp. It is managed by the Defence Training Estate, used by a variety of military units, including the Commando Training Centre Royal Marines (CTCRM), Lympstone, Devon, with many many cadet training units. The Ten Tors event is run by the Army each year in early May from Okehampton Camp.

Okehampton's location at the edge of the moor means that it has always been a route centre. After years of uncertainty, the A30 trunk road was finally re-routed in 1988 to bypass the town, which had previously acted as a holiday traffic bottleneck at summer weekends. The railway station is on the former northerly rail route from Exeter St Davids to Plymouth via Tavistock.

The line from Exeter remains open for passenger services, which were reintroduced partially in 1997 and fully in 2021 after closure in 1972, it is also used for freight traffic to and from Meldon Quarry, two miles west of Okehampton. In 1997, Devon County Council revived a passenger rail service from Exeter, on summer weekends only, in an attempt to reduce motor traffic to the national park, which became a summer Sunday service, operated at its closure by Great Western Railway.

In March 2010, the freight operator Devon & Cornwall Railways announced plans to reinstate a daily passenger service terminating in Exeter, though this never came to fruition. The station was also previously served by heritage trains, but closed to all services in 2019. Okehampton station then reopened to a regular service on 20th November 2021 as part of refurbishment of the line. The Dartmoor Line, as it is now called, opened with a two hourly service to Exeter St Davids, but this will increase to hourly in Spring 2022.

In the wake of widespread disruption caused by damage to the mainline track at Dawlish by coastal storms in February 2014, leaving Plymouth and Cornwall with no rail connection to the rest of the country, Network Rail considered reopening the Exeter-to-Plymouth route via Okehampton and Tavistock.