Dunkeswell

Dunkeswell is a Blackdown Hills village in East Devon, about five miles north of Honiton. The parish had 1,361 residents at the 2011 census.

Dunkeswell Aerodrome was built in 1943 as an American Navy air base, the only one of its kind on British soil during the Second World War, and it continues today as a working civil airfield offering flight training. During the war, American accents mixed with the local Devon voices, Liberator aircraft flew from the runway on anti-submarine patrols, and the base held Saturday night dances that local accounts describe as livelier than the village had seen before. Visitors should expect light aircraft overhead rather than a quiet rural skyline.

Two miles north of the village stand the remains of Dunkeswell Abbey, a Cistercian monastery founded in 1201 by William Briwere and dissolved in 1539. It was a daughter house of Forde Abbey in Dorset, and after the Dissolution the site passed into the hands of Lord Russell. Surviving fragments include part of the cellarer’s range wall and a gatehouse. Holy Trinity Church was built over part of the abbey site in 1842 in the Early English style, incorporating carved fragments from the original monastery into its walls.

Use Dunkeswell as a base for the Blackdown Hills’ quieter lanes and hilltop views, within reach of Honiton for shops and the A30, rather than for a village centre built around a single street or square.