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 Exeter. Beside Totnes are its towns of Dartmouth, Kingsbridge, Salcombe, and Ivybridge — the most populous with 11,851 residents, as at the 2011 Census. To the north, it includes part of Dartmoor National Park, to the east borders Torbay, and to the west Plymouth. It contains some of the most unspoilt coastline on the south coast, including the promontories of Start  Point and Bolt Head. The entire coastline, along with the lower Avon and Dart valleys, form most of the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The South Hams, along with nearby Broadsands in Paignton, is the last British refuge of the cirl bunting. History. The South Hams were formerly part of the Brythonic (Celtic) Kingdom of Dumnonia later reduced to the modern boundary at the River Tamar as Cornwall presumably during the tenth-century reign of Æthelstan. Post-Roman settlement on coastal promontory hillforts, such as Burgh Island, follows the established pattern of trading—of tin in particular—found  across the western, so-called 'Celtic', Atlantic coastal regions. In the later Anglo-Saxon era, the South Hams was a feudal estate consisting of all of the land between the River Plym and River Dart and south of Dartmoor with the English Channel forming the southern boundary. There is some evidence that Cornish was spoken and understood in the area until the late Middle Ages. In 1917, the village of Hallsands was abandoned after much of it was lost to the sea. This happened because the shingle bank protecting the shore was removed to help build Devonport dockyard. In 1944  several villages were evacuated so that training for D-Day could be carried out in secret. The area was chosen because of the resemblance of its beaches to those of Normandy. Preparations were disrupted, and secrecy nearly compromised, by a devastating E-boat attack during Exercise Tiger. In 1967, the suburban towns of Plympton and Plymstock were amalgamated with the City of Plymouth. The current district was formed on 1 April 1974, under the Local Government Act 1972, by the merger of: In the 2016 EU Referendum it voted to remain with a very high (80.3%) turnout. Geography. Geography divides  into three unequal, fuzzy bands, one with bays, headlands, the birdlife, fishing and small harbour towns' estuaries and rias; an unequal wide-ranging elevations middle band with the main, well-conserved towns and; a sparsely populated, upland National Park moorland in the north. For over a century its tourism was concentrated around the railway, with most stations built here from 1847 to 1872 so tourism to its beaches and fishing villages began in earnest much later than to the 'English Riviera' east of the area. South Hams' widespread tourism multiplied on the dualling of the A38 and time-cutting construction  of the M5 and A303 across other parts of south-west England. Note: The aforementioned Brixham and Churston are geographically within neighbouring Torbay but were part of the South Hams Parliamentary constituency. Politics. The South Hams is represented in the House of Commons by two parliamentary constituencies. The constituencies however do not represent the borders of the South Hams. Sir Gary Streeter and Anthony Mangnall represent the constituencies of South West Devon and Totnes respectively.