Washbourne is a hamlet in the

South Hams South Hams is a local government district on the south coast of Devon, England. Services divide between those provided by its own Council headquartered in Totnes, and those provided by Devon County Council headquartered in the city of Exete ...

Devon Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devon is ...

, England, south of

Totnes Totnes ( or ) is a market town and civil parishes in England, civil parish at the head of the estuary of the River Dart in Devon, England, within the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is about west of Paignton, about west-so ...

. It consists of three settlements, Higher Washbourne, Middle Washbourne and Lower Washbourne. Higher and Middle Washbourne are in the civil parish of

Halwell and Moreleigh Halwell and Moreleigh is a civil parish in Devon, England. It comprises the villages of Halwell and Moreleigh. History The civil parish was formed in 1988 by the amalgamation of the former separate civil parishes of Halwell and Moreleigh. Halw ...

(in

Halwell Halwell is a village, former parish and former manor in Devon, South West England. It is presently administered by the civil parish of Halwell and Moreleigh, itself administered by South Hams district council. In 1961 the civil parish had a po ...

parish until 1988). Lower Washbourne is divided between the civil parishes of

Ashprington Ashprington is a village and civil parish in the South Hams district of Devon, England. The village is not far from the River Dart, but high above it, and is about three miles south of Totnes. There is a local pub, hotel and phonebox. The ci ...

and

Cornworthy Cornworthy is a village and civil parish in the South Hams, Devon, England. The hamlet of East Cornworthy lies due east of the village at . The nearby Cornworthy Priory, originally established for nuns of the order of St. Austin, is now a G ...

. Washbourne was mentioned in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

, as ''Waseborne''. The name is from the

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...

''wæsce'' "washing" and ''burna'' "stream", and so means "stream for washing", i.e. clothes or sheep. The stream is now known as the River Wash, a

back-formation In etymology, back-formation is the process or result of creating a new word via inflection, typically by removing or substituting actual or supposed affixes from a lexical item, in a way that expands the number of lexemes associated with the c ...

from the place.

References

External links

{{coord, 50.381, -3.693, region:GB_type:city, display=title Hamlets in Devon