In describing Tiverton, the Uncyclopedia website says with amusing cruelty:
“There is nothing remotely interesting in this town, apart from the bread.”
It is true that the town centre does possess an air that positively encourages drinking tins of lager whilst lying on a bench. The Tivoli cinema has a screening at six yet looks long shuttered. The shops are uninspired. And the Pannier Market promises a Devon experience, yet amounts to few stalls, fewer shoppers, and no atmosphere.
What the town does have is a very, very large Tesco. It is a superstore that epitomises the issue towns like Tiverton face: visitors expect a quaint English market town, but fresh produce in Britain currently is an artisan luxury suffering bohemian pricing. A bloody big supermarket is more practical, as is a Greggs and a Poundland. Common people use these, Tiverton has these, and thus Tiverton feels awfully common.
Yet common lives are stories too. Tiverton, for instance, is the starting point for the Grand Western Canal, my first port of call after departing the bus rank. Reaching it is not a pretty walk – the first ten minutes accompanies a bus route – but upon arriving the scenery improves greatly. The canal as it stands now is more a tourist replica of the original 19th century waterway than a practical transport system, exemplified by the scheduled horse drawn barge, floating cafe, and gift shop, yet it is certainly a pleasant park, and it does have high quality public conveniences. Furthermore, it is always slightly wonderful to see a Clydesdale.
It must be said that the canal was never actually a great success. English engineering was strong enough that a plan to link the Bristol and English channels made sense in 1814, when the first section of the canal opened, but trains soon superseded horses and by 1865 portions were already being closed. By 1925 the canal was unused, and in the 1960s it was time to fill it in. That threat was enough. Like children suddenly wanting to play with a toy once it is destined for the charity shop, the people of Tiverton roared. The canal nobody wanted was saved from becoming a housing estate, and thankfully so.
Another of Tiverton’s claims to fame, and indeed a link to the famous, is the public school Blundell’s. Costing £7470 per term (over £12000 if boarding), the school has a Master Chef finalist as its head chef and alumni that includes governors of overseas territories, members of the clergy, international cricketers, and The Stig from Top Gear. This last and evidently crass celebrity is obviously unbefitting of a proper English school, and makes Blundell’s as common as the town. Tatler could almost be describing a soot-faced scampish rogue when it says: “the selling point of this 400-year-old Devon co-ed is that it’s unpretentious, fun and, with its strong sporting reputation, produces well-rounded, gutsy pupils.”
I did not peruse Blundell’s because it sits slightly out of town, on Blundell’s Road, and the public is not permitted to loiter around either school gates or rich people. However, closer to the centre is Old Blundell’s. This is the building that was used until 1882, and represents Blundell’s original essence. Born out of the death of Elizabethan merchant Peter Blundell in 1601, funds for this school were left in the cloth tycoon’s will as a gift to his home town. He is quoted as stating “though I am not myself a scholar, I will be the means of making more scholars than anyone else in England“. Of course, being a religiously pious man as well as an evil capitalist, Mr Blundell ensured the scholars curriculum included ‘true religion’. Curiously, that true religion can also be experienced 300 miles away watching the thud and blunder of fourth-tier Grimsby Town FC, whose stadium is also named after the great man.
One final stop in a walk around Tiverton is the ruins of Tiverton Castle. Like the canal, the castle does not claim an illustrious history, falling during the English Civil War in the only battle it ever faced, and personally the churchyard at St Peter’s across the road is more appealing. In a falling light, with a decent lawn, the graves and main building feel like they belong in a grand town. This was the place where Tiverton felt, to me, connected to a past in which it met expectations. This was meaningful. Beneath the steeple of the church, the past gave the present a click of redemption.
The Uncyclopedia is cruel about Tiverton. It is cruel about everywhere, especially towns in which it feels like joy died. But Tiverton obviously cannot be the worst place in England because, according to Devon Live, it isn’t even the worst place in Devon. Plus it has curiosities, providing the visitor wishes to combine modest views with research. And I had only been there for a day. That said, by the end of the afternoon I was sitting eating pasta salad on a wall outside that sod off Tesco. From here I went to a Spanish bar staffed by Latvians for a drink before returning to the bus station and slipping out of town for good.