About Us.

The Ashburton Arms was built circa 1800 as a farmhouse and together with other farms, villages and lands belonged to the Barons Ashburton but later the farmhouse became an inn known as the New Inn.

The Inn became the property of 5th Marquess of Northampton upon his marriage on 30th April 1884 to the only daughter of the second Baron Ashburton and it was he who changed the name of the Inn to The Ashburton Arms to please his wife.

The 1983 edition of the Guinness Book of Records states that the largest Breach of Promise ever settled in a court of law anywhere in the world was when 6th Marquess of Northampton promised marriage to Daisy Markham a London showgirl but jilted her and she successfully sued him for a small fortune of £50,000 in 1913. The Marquess was forced to sell all his lands in this area of Devon to raise the money. Consequently on 22nd September 1919 at the Town Hall in Kingsbridge, George Wills bought the freehold of The Ashburton Arms for £1.000. So although still retaining the name of the Ashburton family, these premises passed into the hands of the Northamptons as long ago as 1884 and subsequently into private hands in order to pay for unrequited love in 1919.

Jayne Worrall and Ray Ashby, the current owners, are the 29th recorded licensees of The Ashburton Arms.