About Us
The Bedford Hotel is a 31-bedroom hotel in the heart of the award-winning Devon market town in Tavistock. This much-loved Tavistock hotel has been beautifully restored to create a place which has all the character and charm of days gone by, together with contemporary comforts and a warm welcome.
The bustling bar and lounges are popular with locals and visitors alike, and are the perfect place to rest and enjoy a morning coffee with friends, or a traditional Devon Cream Tea.
The Woburn Restaurant at The Bedford Hotel offers contemporary dining in a stylish yet relaxed setting. The hotel's team of chefs, under the direction of Executive Chef Mike Palmer, create mouth-watering and eye-pleasing dishes, with a strong emphasis on local, seasonal produce.
The Bedford's sister hotel, the Two Bridges Hotel, offers an oasis of comfort in the heart of Dartmoor, and like The Bedford, offers warm hospitality in historic surroundings. The group also includes Dartmoor Brewery, in Princetown, which is England's highest brewery at some 1,465ft above sea level. Dartmoor Brewery is passionate about brewing top quality real ales using the finest local ingredients, and you'll find their beers on the bar at The Bedford Hotel.
History
Built on the remains of a Benedictine Abbey, the town of Tavistock, which now boasts some 11,000 residents, grew up around the Abbey which became the richest in the South West.
The Abbey's riches were seized by the Crown and the Abbey itself was destroyed during Henry VIII’s famed dissolution of the monasteries ... not to mention a few marriages! His father, Henry VII, had even had the audacity to introduce the first licensing statute for alehouses in 1495.
As in many areas throughout Britain the feudal landlord was to give his name to the principal hostelry in the area. This was just the case in Tavistock with The Bedford Hotel taking its name from the Duke of Bedford who appointed no less an architect than Jeffry Wyatt who was also responsible for the transformation of Windsor Castle in 1824. The inn, as it was at the time, was first noted in 1719. Its transformation by Wyatt into The Bedford Hotel was completed in 1822, and a ballroom was added in 1830.
For some years owned by the famous Forte dynasty, the Bedford Hotel has now returned to private ownership and once again enjoys its deserved position as Tavistock's premier hotel.
Home of the Cream Tea
After piecing together fragments of manuscripts, it has been discovered that the people we have to thank for creating Devon's favourite dish, the Devon Cream Tea, are the monks of Tavistock's Benedictine Abbey.
The Abbey was established in the 10th century but was plundered and badly damaged by a band of marauding Vikings in 997AD. It took a lot of hard work to restore the Abbey and the task was undertaken by Ordulf, Earl of Devon, whose father Ordgar had been responsible for establishing the Abbey in the first place.
Ordulf was helped by local workers, who were rewarded with bread, clotted cream and strawberry preserves … and so the Devon cream tea was born. They proved so popular that the monks continued to serve them to passing travellers - a tradition upheld at The Bedford Hotel today, which remains one of the finest places in the county in which to enjoy a Devon Cream Tea.
