South West Devon (UK Parliament constituency)

Sparkwell is a small village and civil parish in the South Hams district of Devon. Historically it was part of Haytor Hundred.Its local Anglican church is All Saints Church, Sparkwell. Its local non-conformist church is Lee Mill Congregational Church, which is affiliated to the EFCC.It is home to an erstwhile one-Michelin-star pub and restaurant, the Treby Arms, previously run by MasterChef: The Professionals winner Anton Piotrowski.Dartmoor Zoological Park is located on the outskirts of the village. The true story of Benjamin Mee's acquisition of the zoo inspired his book We Bought a Zoo, which was later adapted into a film starring Matt Damon. The Hemerdon Mine is located in the parish.

Dartmoor Zoological Park (originally Dartmoor Wildlife Park) is a 30-acre (12 ha) zoo just north of the village of Sparkwell, on the south-west edge of Dartmoor, in the county of Devon in the South West of England. It was opened in 1968 by Ellis Daw who ran it until its licence was revoked and it was forced to close in 2006. The zoo was bought in August 2006 by Benjamin Mee, who reopened the zoo in July 2007, later writing a book about his experiences called We Bought a Zoo (2008). A 2011 film of the same title was loosely based on the book.

Yondertown is a mining hamlet located in an Area of Great Landscape Value on the edge of Dartmoor National Park in the English county of Devon. The community has close connections with the hamlet of Lutton and the nearby village of Cornwood. A mobile library, run by Devon County Council, stops in Yondertown every other Friday.

Langage Power Station is a combined-cycle power plant near the city of Plymouth in Devon, England. Centrica, the original owners of the site, announced on 16 June 2006 that the natural gas fired power station was to be constructed on their behalf by Alstom. Section 36 consent was granted in 2000 and Reserved Matters were approved in 2005. The 885 MW plant was expected to cost £400 million and to start generating in early 2009, but problems with internal pipework pushed this back. The power station was completed and operations started in March 2010. Langage was set to be the first fossil fuel power station built in the UK since 2005, but due to delays it was preceded by Marchwood Power Station, which was commissioned in 2009. Multiple other CCGT stations were also commissioned around this time, including Pembroke Power Station and West Burton B. The station was commissioned against an expected 'energy gap' in UK generating capacity, caused by the expected closure of nuclear and older coal-fired stations.The power station had permission to build three gas-powered turbines when it bought the site in 2004, but due to land constraints they were only able to build two.The plant uses two Alstom GT26 gas turbines, each driving an air-cooled turbogenerator, with a heat recovery steam generator powering a single STF30C steam turbine which also drives another air-cooled turbogenerator.Centrica put the plant up for sale in May 2014, stating an aim to invest in smaller, more flexible power stations. On 21 June 2017, Centrica agreed to sell the power station to EP UK Investments as part of a deal that also saw South Humber Bank CCGT power station change hands between the two companies. EP UK Investments is the daughter company of EP Power Europe, which is 100% owned by Czech energy group EPH (owned by Daniel Křetínský). The UK high pressure national gas pipeline network (the National Transmission System) was extended to Plymouth in 1989 (Feeder No.20 terminates at an Above Ground Installation (AGI) south of Smithaleigh). Langage Power Station was built to exploit the availability of high pressure gas and the station now represents the southernmost gas-fired station on the network.

Drakelands Mine, also known as Hemerdon Mine or Hemerdon Ball Mine, is a tungsten and tin mine. It is located 11 km (7 miles) northeast of Plymouth, near Plympton, in Devon, England. It lies to the north of the villages of Sparkwell and Hemerdon, and adjacent to the large china clay pits near Lee Moor. The mine had been out of operation since 1944, except for the brief operation of a trial mine in the 1980s. Work started to re-open it in 2014, but it ceased activities in 2018. It hosts the fourth largest tin-tungsten deposit in the world.A new company, Tungsten West plc, now plan to re-open the mine in 2022, after investing to alter the processing plant. A ground up review lead to the recognition that the ore is not in fact Wolframite, but is in fact a related ore, Ferberite, and changes were needed to improve extraction efficiencies. In addition, a subsidiary will enhance the mine with aggregate sales as a by-product of mining.

Wasteberry Camp is an Iron Age hill fort situated close to the hamlet of Blackpool, southeast of Plympton, Devon, England. The fort is situated on a hilltop in Warren Wood at approximately 90 metres (300 ft) above sea level, overlooking Silverbridge Lake.

Cornwood is a village and civil parish in the South Hams in Devon, England. The parish has a population of 988. The village is part of the electoral ward called Cornwood and Sparkwell. The ward population at the 2011 census was 2,321.Blachford House is a large grade II* listed country house standing in parkland on the northwest edge of the village. It is currently owned by Alexander Darwall, a multimillionaire hedge fund manager who became notorious for bringing about a ban on the long-practised custom of wild camping on Dartmoor, in response to which 3,000 protesters gathered in Cornwood to march onto nearby Stall Moor on 21 January 2023. Darwall’s actions earned him the epithet ‘the most hated landowner’. From 1852 to 1959 the village was served by Cornwood railway station on the South Devon Main Line between Exeter and Plymouth. The civil parish includes the villages and hamlets of Lutton, Yondertown, North Hele, South Hele, Corntown, Uppaton, Tor, East Rook and West Rook.

Fardel is a historic manor in the parish of Cornwood, in the South Hams district of Devon. It was successively the seat of the Raleigh and Hele families. The surviving Grade I listed medieval manor house is situated about half-way between Cornwood and Ivybridge, just outside the Dartmoor National Park on its south-western border.

Stamford Fort is a 19th-century fort, built as a result of the Royal Commission on National Defence of 1859. Part of an extensive scheme known as Palmerston Forts, after the prime minister who championed the scheme, it was built to defend the landward approaches to the east of Plymouth, as an element of the plan for the defence of the Royal Naval Dockyard at Devonport. It is 165 feet above sea level, between Jennycliffe Bay and Hooe Lake. Designed by Captain (later Maj General) Edmund Frederick Du Cane, it was built by George Roach and Company, who also built Staddon Fort. It was built as a five sided polygonal fort, surrounded by a dry ditch. Three sides face landward, one seaward, whilst the rear faces the Cattewater. The ditch was defended with three caponiers and a counter-scarp gallery. The fort was connected by a military road to the nearby Staddon Fort. To house the fort's garrison a barrack block for 200 men was built within the rear section of the fort, arranged in 13 casemates, on two floors. These have now been converted into flats.It was designed to be armed with 20 guns and 6 mortars. By 1893 it mounted five 64 Pounder Rifled Muzzle Loading Guns, one 7-inch Rifled Breech Loading (RBL) gun and two 10-inch Rifled Muzzle Loading (RML) guns.By the early 1900s the fort had become obsolete as a defensive position and was disarmed in 1904. It was sold off by the War Office in 1963. It is now used as a caravan park, fitness centre and private flats. It was Scheduled in 1963.

Ivybridge Priory or St. Austin's Priory was a monastic house in Devon, England. From 1932 it was a priory of the Order of Augustinian Recollects. They relocated to Devon from Spain at this time due to anti-clericalism, purchasing it from the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, who had themselves taken it on due to earlier anti-clericalism in France, to which by 1932 they were able to return. During the 20th century, missionaries were educated at the priory. It shrank over the decades, with several buildings being demolished in 1981, and was eventually closed as a monastic house and passed into the hands of the Diocese of Plymouth in 2016.

Newnham Park (before circa 1718 Loughtor) is an historic estate in the civil parish of Sparkwell, Devon, UK. It was known as Loughtor until about 1700 when the ancient Strode family, long seated at Newnham, about 1 mile south-east of the manor house of Loughtor, abandoned Newnham and moved their residence to Loughtor (which they had inherited by a marriage in the 16th century) where they built a new mansion house which they renamed "Newnham Park". In 2014 the mansion house with an estate of about 1,550 acres is still owned by a descendant (via various female lines) of the Courtenay and Strode families which held the estate from the 15th century, and which were well established in the county of Devon long before that time. In 2014 part of the estate is operated as a commercial clay-pigeon shooting ground.

Blachford Manor is a country house in Cornwood in Devon. It was the seat of the Rogers family. It is owned by Alexander Darwall. The house is at the centre of a 4,000 acre estate. It is listed Grade II* on the National Heritage List for England. It was originally constructed in the 16th century, but extensively rebuilt in the 18th and early 19th centuries. The landscaped grounds were originally a deer park and were laid out in the 19th century, with the lake being created in 1827 by James Green. The house has been noted by several antiquarians of Devon. In 1806 Richard Polwhele described Blachford as "well merits particular attention. Its situation is rather low and water too near the house but its extensive lawn and the groups of trees have a pleasing effect". In 1850 William White describe the house as a "large substantial mansion, in a delightful situation, commanding fine views". Frederick Stockdale wrote that it was "a spacious mansion-surrounded by an extensive demesne containing a variety of beautiful romantic scenes of an Alpine character". A dispute over access to the estate between the Dartmoor National Park Authority and Darwall reached the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in October 2024. In May 2025 the Supreme Court unanimously rejected Darwall's case, basing their judgement around the Dartmoor by-law that states "the public shall have a right of access to the commons on foot and on horseback for the purpose of open-air recreation". The judges said that references to open-air recreation were "open-ended and unqualified" and "naturally includes camping".