Abbey Bridge, Tavistock

• River: Tavy, Tavistock
• Grid reference: SX 482 743
• Date: rebuilt 1763 for the turnpike; approaches altered 1859-60, widened about 1860 after the GWR station opened
• Designation: Grade II, Historic England list entry 1162730 (listed 20 December 1983)

A medieval bridge here served Tavistock Abbey, according to the Devon County Council plaque; it was replaced in 1763 for the turnpike and widened about 1860. The present bridge has two segmental arches in granite ashlar, with cutwaters on the upstream side.

Old books call the crossing Guile Bridge. Risdon's Survey of Devon (about 1632) says the Tavistock monks avoided an ambush by the Plymstock men at the Tavy by building a new bridge elsewhere, named Guilebridge in memory of the trick: the legend of Childe the Hunter. Historians doubt it. W. Finberg found Tavistock's guildhall called Guilehall in 1651, so Guilebridge is more likely Guild Bridge, and the Devonshire Association of 1889 and R. Hansford Worth both point out that the Abbey held Plymstock before the Conquest, which undoes the story. The claim that the Jesus Guild built it rests on the 1889 paper alone.

Sources: Historic England list entry 1162730; Wikipedia, Childe's Tomb; Legendary Dartmoor, Childe the Hunter; Transactions of the Devonshire Association, vol. 21 (1889); Worth, History of Devonshire.

This bridge is one of the crossings gathered in Dartmoor Bridges, a guide to the clapper bridges, packhorse bridges and road bridges of the moor and its edge.