Dartmouth Devon
Dartmouth is one of the finest and most completely realised historic harbour towns in England, a settlement on the west bank of the Dart estuary in south Devon whose combination of the medieval and Tudor town houses, the two great castles guarding the harbour entrance, the naval college on the hill above and the extraordinary natural beauty of the Dart estuary creates a destination of exceptional quality and historical depth. The town has one of the finest collections of historic buildings of any small port in England, its prosperity as a medieval wine trade and privateering centre having financed architecture of considerable ambition.
The Butter Walk in the centre of Dartmouth, a series of four seventeenth-century merchants' houses whose overhanging upper floors rest on granite columns creating a covered walkway below, is one of the finest examples of Jacobean commercial architecture in England, its carved woodwork and the scale of the merchants' ambition speaking directly to the wealth generated by the trade of this exceptionally well-positioned harbour. The nearby Flavel Arts Centre occupies the church built by Thomas Flavel, whose merchant fortune funded many of Dartmouth's finest buildings.
Dartmouth Castle guarding the harbour entrance is one of the earliest purpose-built artillery castles in England, its round towers designed specifically to mount cannon for the defence of the harbour against attack from the sea. The combination of the castle, the estuary views and the Bayard's Cove Fort below the town provides a concentration of military heritage in a small area of great scenic beauty.