The remains of stone-age hut circles can be found on Harford Moor, above Ivybridge, but the ivy-covered bridge, after which the town was later named, was first recorded in 1250; it is possible that it existed as a river crossing prior to the Doomsday Book of 1086. An early ‘King’s Highway’ from Exeter to Trematon Castle near Saltash, the 12th Century crossing may have been constructed by the monks of Plympton Priory (founded in 1121) to give them access to their lands at Wrangaton, Dean Prior and Buckfastleigh.

In 1280 a deed from John Peverel of Ermington Manor granted rights to the property along the river as far as the ‘Ponte Ederosa’ to his daughter Iseult and in 1332 there was further reference to one Alfred de Ponte Hedera as a taxpayer in Ermington and Harford. The Peverels had been landowners in the area since the reign of Henry 1 (1100-1135) and it is likely that they built the first substantial bridge around 1200.

At some period it was agreed that the river crossing should be the common boundary for the four parishes of Cornwood, Ugborough, Ermington and Harford (with Stowford). Convenient to all, it was only two or three miles from all the parish churches and it became a recognised focal point for the area.

The present packhorse bridge dates from 1400, becoming a county bridge in 1531 and the C-stones (County stones)’ which indicate the bridges importance as a river crossing, can be seen 300 feet to the south of the bridge on both sides. The Parish stones of Ugborough and Ermington can still be seen near the bridge. By now it was an important route between Exeter and Plymouth but not much was expected of this rough route, described in 1558 as ‘painful for man and horse’!

Records in 1588 state that Ivybridge consisted of corn mill (1523), an edge full mill, a manor house and two houses.

At this time the village of Stowford - a local name for a ford crossing – on the east bank of the crossing in Harford Parish, was more important than the surrounding manors and depended for its prosperity on the highway and the mills along the River Erme.

Stowford House was a royal demesne until 1566, holding the stannary courts for the Erme valley at a time when the surrounding areas depended on tin and wool for their livelihoods. In 1550 there was a ‘tynne’ mill in Ivybridge (on land which later became part of Stowford Paper Mill) owned by John Bury, a leader of the Prayer Book Rebellion of 1549. He, and other principles of the movement, were hung, drawn and quartered in Tyburn in 1550 and his property and lands granted to William Gybbes. In 1555 Gybbes sold the fulling and tin mills he owned to an Exeter merchant.

The 17th century was a relatively quiet time in Ivybridge. The Manor of Ivybridge, first referred to as a manor at the end of the 14th century, was a thriving estate in the 16th and 17th centuries, consisting of 180 acres of arable land and a further 200 acres of pasture, woodland and moorland. Ivybridge Manor House is believed to have been situated to the west of Pound Farm and the later Highland House (1790) was built on part of the Manor lands long after the original manor house disappeared at the end of the 17th Century.

In 1756 the road from Plymouth through Ivybridge to Ashburton was ‘turnpiked’. The bridge was widened to its present width in the 1750s, enabling stagecoaches to cross the river. The London Inn, in Harford Road, and The Rogers Arms in Western Road became staging posts on the principal coach road between London, Exeter and Plymouth. The London Inn soon became one of the most highly regarded inns in the southwest, attracting well known artists on professional commissions. The rocks in the river were a favoured viewpoint and JMW Turner’s landscapes of the Ivy Bridge (1813) and surroundings, including his original drawings, are now held at the Tate in London.

The extractive industries are an integral part of Ivybridge’s history. Early tin extraction above the Town has heavily influenced the landscape of the river course on the moor and, to the south of the Town in Filham, silver-lead and arsenic were mined from 1838 to 1856 until the mine, with a shaft sunk to 60 fathoms, ceased to be viable.

In 1910 the newly formed China Clay Corporation Ltd, with headquarters in Ivybridge, built a single track, three-foot gauge, railway running eight miles from the drying sheds at Cantrell to the pits at Redlake, with a rise of over a thousand feet. The ‘puffing billy’ track opened on 11th September 1911 but it was not until the end of 1913 that the works were completed and ready to commence production. Sadly, the colour and the quality of the clay was poor and the lower financial returns eventually led to the winding up, in 1932 - the worst year of the depression, of the renamed Ivybridge China Clay Company Ltd. The depression may be why, in the 1930s, peat was cut, dried, taken off the moor and used as a fuel by local families.

The River Erme has always been hugely influential in the development of Ivybridge. Its pure waters and power proved ideal for papermaking and in 1787 William Dunsterville built Stowford Paper Mill close to an earlier grist mill of 1713. The site of the mill is one of the oldest industrial sites in Devon with a corn mill recorded in 1523. By the turn of the nineteenth century Ivybridge was thriving with various mills all harnessing the power of the river, later joined by a tannery and worsted mill. The population slowly began to expand with the addition employment.

In the early 1800s, houses were built along Erme Road, Highland Street, Green Street (no longer in existence), Church Street and Fore Street with the latter having most of the shops. Water was obtained by a series of leats and the village recorded a population of 1,507 in 1821. By now there were regular stagecoaches passing through the village from London although the journey could take up to four days. The coaches were finding the tight turns over the Ivy Bridge increasingly difficult and in 1833 a new bridge linking Exeter Road with Fore Street was constructed. The Kings Arms at the top of Fore St was built next to the bridge and rebuilt in 1891.

Further pubs and houses were built in the 1840s and 1850s. The Sportsman’s Inn on Exeter Rd, then in Ugborough parish, was originally called the Grocers Arms as it was sponsored by the Guild of Grocers in London. At the Bridge Inn (now the Trehill Arms) Solomon Northmore was the innkeeper from 1840 to 1890.

In 1848, the most significant change in the village came with the arrival of the broad-gauge railway on its northern edge. The huge viaduct across the Erme Valley was a remarkable feat of construction, with eleven bays, engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The original wooden viaduct was replaced and double tracked in 1893 under the ownership of the Great Western Railway but the original supporting pillars are still visible in Longtimber Woods. The station remained in use until its final closure to passengers in 1959 and to goods in the mid-1960s. The new station to the east of Ivybridge was opened in 1994.

This new access for visitors and small industry saw another population rise and Stowford Paper Mill had a new owner – John Allen, a Plymouth entrepreneur and director of Delabole Slate Quarry in Cornwall – in 1849. Over the next 15 years the mill was rebuilt and further mechanised, with massive investment offering increased employment, especially to women. In the 1860s the mill employed 100 women and 60 men. People from the surrounding villages moved to Ivybridge and more shops, businesses and houses were built along the Western Road area.

The first infants’ school in Ivybridge was founded in 1849. The National School for both boys and girls was opened in December 1856. Before and after this date the village had several private schools with Sunnyside in Blachford Road in use from the 1930s to 1950s with Mrs Harris as head. The National School was later modernised and renamed Station Road School and it is now known as Erme Primary, one of three schools of the recently created Moorsway Federation.

The Congregational Church was built in 1864 on land given by John Allen on Exeter Road. A schoolroom was added in 1888. The first St John’s Church, on Blachford Rd, was built in the 1786 as a chapel of ease and it was replaced by the present church in 1881. The new church was extended in the 1880s to provide seating for the 40 girls from the Dame Hannah School paid for by the Rogers family. It was 1925 before permission was given to demolish the original church at a cost of £5.

After extensive rebuilding in the 1850 and 1860s, the paper mill employed over 300 people with agriculture, commercial businesses and retail shops providing other opportunities for work. John Allen, in association with the Ivybridge Gas and Coke Company, supplied gas to local inhabitants as well as the mill, and it was his sons who later became involved in providing lighting from a generator at Lees Mill, now known as Glanville’s Mill. Early water supplies for houses were provided by the lords of the Manor of Ivybridge, the Rogers family. Later supplies for the town came from the reservoir constructed in the 1870s in Longtimber Woods but in 1914/16 a new, larger, reservoir was built on Harford Moor with a capacity of four million gallons to cope with the expanding needs of the population. The reservoir in Longtimber Woods was used as a swimming pool from 1914 until the late 1960s. and in the second World War was a training facility for the American troops stationed at Uphill Camp on Exeter Rd.

In 1942 MacAndrews Fields saw the erection of many Nissen huts which were to become home to the American troops of the 1st Battalion, 116th Infantry Regiment from Virginia, USA. Here the four companies trained until just before D-Day. They were the first troops to land on Omaha beach and suffered huge losses. One company, from Bedford, VA, proportionally suffered the American nation’s severest D-Day losses. In recognition of this sacrifice their village was subsequently chosen as the location for the American National D-Day Memorial. A local memorial to the Americans in Ivybridge is in Harford Road Car Park.

In the 1960s Ivybridge slowly expanded and by 1971 the population of Ivybridge had risen to 3074. By then the Town had been earmarked as a dormitory town and new housing estates appeared both east and west of the original village centre. In the mid-1980s, Ivybridge was described as the ‘fastest growing town in Europe’.

The Ivybridge Bypass, part of the A38 Devon Express Way between the M5 and the Tamar Bridge, was completed in 1973/4, taking the increasing volume of through traffic away from narrow Fore Street.

In 1977 the parish council changed its name to Ivybridge Town Council and John Congdon, a local shopkeeper, became the first Town Mayor.

In the 21st century the Town’s population is estimated at around 14,000. The Town has four junior schools and a senior Community College serving a large hinterland. Stowford Paper Mill closed in 2013 after 226 years of specialist paper production.

Leisure activities have increased with the construction of a leisure centre and, in 2008, a community hub and library - The Watermark. Ivybridge is the start of the Two Moors Way which spans 102 miles from Ivybridge on the southern boundary of Dartmoor National Park to Lynmouth on the North Devon Coast in Exmoor National Park. It is also the end of the Erme-Plym trail which starts at Wembury.

History of Ivybridge by kind permission of https://ivybridge-heritage.org/