Appledore North Devon
Appledore is one of the most attractive and most completely preserved maritime villages in Devon, a small port at the confluence of the Rivers Taw and Torridge near Bideford whose combination of narrow streets of Georgian and earlier cottages, the active shipyard, the maritime museum and the estuary setting creates one of the most authentic and most rewarding small coastal destinations in the West Country. The village retains the genuine character of a working maritime community in a way that more tourist-developed Devon coastal settlements have lost.
The shipyard at Appledore, one of the last traditional shipbuilding yards in Britain, has constructed vessels on this site for centuries and continues to build and repair ships of considerable scale. The sight and sound of an active shipyard working with steel and tradition in a village of this intimate scale is one of the most distinctive features of Appledore and the most powerful evidence of the maritime heritage that the village museum documents in more conventional ways.
The North Devon Maritime Museum in the village provides an excellent account of the seafaring history of the Taw-Torridge estuary, including the Victorian seamen who emigrated to Newfoundland and established the fishing communities of that coast. The estuary itself, with its shifting sandbanks, the bird life of the mudflats and the views across to Instow and the Taw Valley beyond, provides the beautiful setting for a village that rewards extended exploration.