Brixham

Brixham is a coastal town and civil parish in the borough of Torbay in the county of Devon, in the south-west of England. As of the 2021 census, Brixham had a population of 16,825. It is one of the main three centres of the borough, along with Paignton and Torquay. It is believed that the name Brixham originates from the personal name of an early resident, Brioc, followed by the Old English suffix, ham meaning home. The town, which is predominantly hilly, is built around a natural harbour, which in addition to leisure craft, provides anchorage for what is now one of England's (but not the UK's) largest remaining commercial fishing fleets. A conspicuous local tourist attraction is the permanently moored replica of Sir Francis Drake's ship Golden Hind. Historically, Brixham was made up of two separate communities connected by a marshy lane. In Fishtown, in the immediate vicinity of the harbour, the residents made a living mainly from fishing and related trades, as the name suggests. Cowtown, inland in the vicinity of what is now St Mary's Square, made its living from agriculture. Cowtown is on the road out of town to the south-west in the direction of Kingswear. St Mary's Square is overlooked by a sizeable church standing on the site of a Saxon original.…

Brixham is a coastal town and civil parish in the borough of Torbay in the county of Devon, in the south-west of England. As of the 2021 census, Brixham had a population of 16,825. It is one of the main three centres of the borough, along with Paignton and Torquay. It is believed that the name Brixham originates from the personal name of an early resident, Brioc, followed by the Old English suffix, ham meaning home. The town, which is predominantly hilly, is built around a natural harbour, which in addition to leisure craft, provides anchorage for what is now one of England's (but not the UK's) largest remaining commercial fishing fleets. A conspicuous local tourist attraction is the permanently moored replica of Sir Francis Drake's ship Golden Hind. Historically, Brixham was made up of two separate communities connected by a marshy lane. In Fishtown, in the immediate vicinity of the harbour, the residents made a living mainly from fishing and related trades, as the name suggests. Cowtown, inland in the vicinity of what is now St Mary's Square, made its living from agriculture. Cowtown is on the road out of town to the south-west in the direction of Kingswear. St Mary's Square is overlooked by a sizeable church standing on the site of a Saxon original. On 5 November 1688, the Dutch stadtholder William of Orange landed in Brixham with 40,000 soldiers, sailors, and volunteers, before marching on London, where he was crowned King William III as part of the Glorious Revolution. ==Governance== There are two tiers of local government covering Brixham, at parish (town) and unitary authority level: Brixham Town Council and Torbay Council, based in Torquay. Brixham Town Council is based at the Town Hall on New Road. Brixham was an ancient parish. By the 1860s the parish contained two main settlements, being Lower Brixham around the harbour and Higher Brixham on higher ground to the south around the parish church. The larger settlement of Lower Brixham was made a local government district in 1862, governed by a local board. Prior to that the whole parish had been administered by its vestry in the same way as most rural areas. Higher Brixham and the rural parts of the parish continued to be governed by the vestry until 1894. The local board built itself the Town Hall on New Road in 1886 to serve as its headquarters and as a market hall and public hall. Local boards were converted into urban district councils in December 1894, and the Lower Brixham Urban District was enlarged at the same time to cover the whole parish of Brixham. In recognition of the enlargement, at the second meeting of the urban district council in January 1895 it voted to change its name from Lower Brixham to just Brixham. In 1968 the urban districts of Brixham and Paignton, the municipal borough of Torquay and the parish of Churston Ferrers were all abolished. A county borough called Torbay was created to cover the whole area, with some adjustments of the boundaries to neighbouring parishes at the same time, including the more rural southern part of Brixham being transferred to the parish of Kingswear. As a county borough, Torbay was administratively independent from Devon County Council. Six years later, in 1974, local government was reformed again, with Torbay becoming a non-metropolitan district and Devon County Council providing county-level services to the area again. Torbay regained its independence from the county council in 1998 when it was made a unitary authority. Torbay remains part of the ceremonial county of Devon for the purposes of lieutenancy. From 1968 to 2007 Brixham was directly administered by Torbay Borough Council, having no lower-tier authority of its own. On 1 April 2007 a new civil parish of Brixham was created, with its council declaring the new parish to be a town and adopting the name Brixham Town Council. In 2011 ownership of Brixham Town Hall was transferred from Torbay Council to Brixham Town Council to use as its headquarters. Brixham is part of the UK parliamentary constituency of South Devon, whose MP has been Caroline Voaden since 2024. ==Education== Brixham has a number of schools, mostly located in the centre of residential areas. The town has one secondary school, Brixham College. Other schools and academies in Brixham and the surrounding area include Eden Park Primary School Academy Brixham Church of England Primary School Saint Margaret Clitherow Catholic Primary School Furzeham Primary School ==Media== Local TV coverage is provided by BBC South West and ITV West Country. Television signals are received from the Beacon Hill TV transmitter and the local relay transmitter. Local radio stations are BBC Radio Devon on 104.3 FM, Heart West on 96.4 FM, Greatest Hits Radio South West (formerly The Breeze) on 105.5 FM, Radio Exe on 107.3 FM, and Riviera FM, a community based station which broadcast to the town on 107.9 FM. The town is served by the local newspaper, Herald Express which publishes on Thursdays. ==Transport== entrance in 1964 Brixham railway station was the terminus of the Torbay and Brixham Railway. It served the town from the bay platform at Churston station until the line was closed in 1963. Some of the track bed remains in place. Houses in Harbour View Close were built on the site of the station. The Association of Train Operating Companies included Brixham as one of fourteen towns that, based on 2009 data, would benefit from a new railway service, but restoration is highly unlikely. Although Brixham is no longer on the rail network, frequent buses taking 25 minutes connect Brixham with the national rail network at Paignton, where the bus station is conveniently situated opposite the rail station. Trains from Paignton run to destinations such as , , London Paddington and . Torbay's flagship bus route, Stagecoach South West service 12, operates up to every 10 minutes and has its terminus at Brixham Town Square, with the service returning to Newton Abbot via Paignton, Torquay and Kingskerswell. The service also calls at the Brixham Park and Ride site located on the A3022 (Dartmouth Road). Flat rate parking charges include a bus ride for a car's occupants to Brixham and return. Stagecoach service 18 take about 15 minutes for the journey from Brixham (Bank Street) to Kingswear, where a river crossing to Dartmouth can be made by ferry. Local town services operated by both Stagecoach and Country Bus, serve Furzeham, Wall Park, Sharkham, South Bay, Higher Brixham, Summercombe and Hillhead. There are direct National Express coach services to London via Bristol and Heathrow Airport, and Sheffield via Bristol and Birmingham. statue by the harbour Frequent ferry services for foot passengers operate from Brixham Harbour to Torquay between the months of April and September, the fastest taking 35 minutes. There are also seasonal ferries to Paignton. Pleasure cruises also call at Brixham Harbour en route from Torquay to Dartmouth, during the spring, summer and autumn. ==Monuments== Prince of Orange statue Prince of Orange pillar ==Notable people== , ca 1584 Sir Humphrey Gilbert (c. 1539 – 1583), an adventurer, explorer, MP and soldier. Sir Francis Buller, 1st Baronet (1746–1800), an English judge. Flora Thompson (1876–1947), novelist and poet, wrote a semi-autobiographical trilogy, Lark Rise to Candleford, died locally Honoré Willsie Morrow (1880¹–1940), American author and magazine editor; lived locally in the 1930's, became the president of Brixham Literary and Debating Society

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