The ACP Visits Barnstaple on the River Taw

On 19 September as our first roadshow presentation for the 2024/25 academic year the ACP visited the river-port town of Barnstaple in Devon. The town lies at the River Taw’s lowest crossing point before the Bristol Channel. From the 14th century it was licensed to export wool from which it earned great wealth. Later it imported Irish wool, but its harbour silted up and other trades developed such as shipbuilding, foundries and sawmills.

The name is first recorded in the 10th century and is thought to derive from the Early English bearde, meaning “battle-axe”, and stapol, meaning “pillar”, i.e. a post or pillar to mark a religious or administrative meeting place. The derivation from staple meaning “market”, indicating a market from its foundation, is likely to be incorrect, as the use of staple in that sense first appears in 1423. Barnstaple was formerly referred to as “Barum”, a contraction of the Latin form of the name ad Barnastapolitum in Latin documents such as the episcopal registers of the Diocese of Exeter.

Our hosts for the day were Park Community School, a member of the Tarka Learning Partnership, and Michael Smith, Chris Marshall and Lee Mason would like to warmly thank Ms Vicky Owen, Head Teacher, for agreeing to host the ACP and, in particular, Nick Kingdom-Kruszewski who organised the day and ensured that the ACP was supported so well and that everything went smoothly.

There was an audience of 140 students who became deeply involved in the hands-on activities we took with us, such as flight simulators and VR equipment plus, of course, asking Spot a whole range of questions. We would like to thank them all and wish them every success for their future education and subsequent careers. Now part of the ACP ‘family’, Park School will receive a continuing and growing input of relevant information via our website, social media and YouTube channel.