Harford Parish Meeting

Harford is a small rural parish on the southern edge of Dartmoor, about two miles north of Ivybridge in the South Hams district of Devon. With a population of only 77 at the last count, it is the smallest civil parish in South Hams, and its governance reflects that scale: rather than an elected parish council, Harford is administered as a parish meeting, one of only two in the district, alongside Woodleigh. The parish covers the hamlet of Harford itself together with the surrounding farmland and moorland fringe, including Harford Moor, Western Beacon and stretches of the River Erme valley. Its parish church, St Petroc's, is a granite building dating from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century and stands as the main landmark of the settlement. The parish meeting has no dedicated website; contact is handled through a named clerk listed in South Hams District Council's official parish directory (current as of the council's 2026 records). Cover photograph: Church of St Petroc, Harford, by Derek Harper, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.