Hatherleigh

Hatherleigh is a small market town on the River Lew in West Devon, about 6 miles from Okehampton and north-west of Dartmoor, outside the National Park. The 2021 census recorded 1,902 residents, which makes it the smallest town in Devon. The name is Old English for a hawthorn or heather wood or clearing, and the sources do not settle which.

The church of St John the Baptist stands in Market Square. A church here is listed in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Hadrelaia, but nothing of it survives above ground. The tower is late 14th century, the octagonal spire mid 15th century and most of the rest late 15th and early 16th century. The shingled spire was replaced after the Burns' Day storm of 1990. The font is 12th century, and the eight bells were cast between 1552 and 1883.

The 1870s Imperial Gazetteer records a Tuesday market and four fairs a year, and says a market house was built in 1840 to revive a market that had lapsed for over fifty years. An obelisk put up in 1860 commemorates Lt Col William Morris, who died in 1858. The carnival, on the second weekend of November, began in 1903 to raise money for local healthcare. It is best known for flaming tar barrels pulled through the town. One local guide says they go back hundreds of years and may have a pagan link; no source checked proves it.