Milton Combe

Milton Combe is a village in the civil parish of Buckland Monachorum, west Devon, about two miles from Yelverton and eight from Plymouth. Houses sit on the steep sides of a narrow valley, with a brook that runs towards the River Tavy near Lopwell. The name was recorded in 1249 as Mile Cumbe, meaning middle valley, and the Post Office chose the present form in 1890 to tell it apart from other Miltons nearby.

At the start of the 20th century the village had a church, a Wesleyan chapel, an infant school, a men's reading room, a post office, several shops, two pubs, a soup factory, a sugar refinery, a mill (closed 1886) and a cider press. Now there is the Church of the Holy Spirit, built in 1878 and Grade II listed, a village hall in the old infant school (opened 1893, closed 1923) and one pub, the Who'd Have Thought It. The name is said to come from a landlord's surprise at being given a full licence.

In the Second World War the village housed people from the Royal Navy hospital at Maristow, an American camp at Bickham and RAF Harrowbeer. Part of it has been a Conservation Area since 1970, and a duck race runs down the Milton Brook from the pub each year.