Template:Wp-Barnstaple-History

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The earliest local settlement was probably at Pilton by the River Yeo, now a northern suburb. Pilton is recorded in the Burghal Hidage (c. 917) as a burh founded by Alfred the Great,^[1] and may have undergone a Viking attack in 893, but by the later 10th-century Barnstaple had taken over its local defence. It had a mint before the Norman Conquest.^[1]

The feudal barony of Barnstaple had its caput at Barnstaple Castle, granted by William the Conqueror to Geoffrey de Montbray, who appears as its holder in the 1086 Domesday Book. The barony fell to the Crown in 1095 after Montbray rebelled against William II. He transferred the barony to Juhel de Totnes, a feudal baron of Totnes. By 1107 Juhel had founded Totnes Priory and then Barnstaple Priory, of the Cluniac order, dedicated to St Mary Magdalene. After Juhel's son died intestate, the barony was split between the de Braose and Tracy families, before reuniting under Henry de Tracy. It then passed through several families, before ending in the hands of Margaret Beaufort (died 1509), mother of King Henry VII.

A market is first recorded in 1274. In the 1340s, merchants of the town claimed the rights of a free borough had been granted by King Athelstan in a lost charter. This was challenged periodically by successive lords of the manor, but it allowed merchants an unusual degree of self-government. The town's wealth in the Middle Ages rested on being a staple port licensed to export wool. It had an early merchant guild of St Nicholas. In the early 14th century it was Devon's third richest town after Exeter and Plymouth, and its largest textile centre outside Exeter until about 1600.^[2] The wool trade was aided by its port, from which five ships were contributed to a force sent to fight the Spanish Armada in 1588. Barnstaple was one of the "privileged ports" of the Spanish Company, (established 1577), whose armorials appear on two mural monuments to 17th-century merchants: Richard Beaple (died 1643), three times Mayor, and Richard Ferris (Mayor in 1632), who with Alexander Horwood received a payment from the Corporation of Barnstaple in 1630 for "riding to Exeter about the Spanish Company." in St Peter's Church, and on the decorated plaster ceiling of the old Golden Lion Inn,^[3] Boutport Street, now a restaurant beside the Royal and Fortescue Hotel.

The town benefited from rising trade with America in the 16th and 17th centuries, for the benefit of wealthy merchants who built impressive town houses. Some of these survive behind more recent frontages, for instance No. 62 Boutport Street, said to have one of the best plaster ceilings in Devon.^[4] The merchants also built almshouses, including Penrose's, and backed their legacy with elaborate family monuments inside the church.^[4]

By the 18th century, Barnstaple had ceased to be a woollen manufacturing town. Its output was replaced from Ireland, for which it was the main landing place; the raw materials were then taken by land to clothmaking towns in mid and east-Devon, such as Tiverton and Honiton.^[2] However, the harbour was silting up. As early as c. 1630 Tristram Risdon reported, "It hardly beareth small vessels." Bideford, lower down the estuary and benefiting from the scouring by the fast-flowing River Torridge, gradually took over the trade.^[2]

Although Barnstaple's trade in 1680–1730 was surpassed by Bideford's, it retained economic importance into the early 20th century, manufacturing lace, gloves, sail-cloth and fishing-nets, with extensive potteries, tanneries, sawmills and foundries, and some shipbuilding still carried on. The Bear Street drill hall dates from the early 19th century.

Barnstaple was one borough reformed by the Municipal Reform Act 1835. Between the 1930s and the 1950s it embraced the villages of Pilton, Newport, and Roundswell through ribbon development.