It has a beautiful church. Ashburton consisted of a royal and an episcopal manor, each with its several municipal officers. A stream divided the manors. Ashburton is the _tun_ on the Ashburn. _Ash_ is but another form of _Exe_, from _usk_, water. It owed its growth and prosperity to the wool trade. The proximity to Dartmoor, an unrivalled run for sheep, and the water of the stream to turn the mills, gave to Ashburton a great significance as a centre of cloth manufacture. Added to which it was a stannary town. The old chapel of S. Laurence in the town, now converted into a grammar school, belonged to the guild of the cloth-workers, and their seal became the arms of the borough: On a mount vert, a chapel with spire, in dexter chief the sun in splendour, in sinister a crescent moon, in dexter base a teasel, in sinister a saltire. The teasel and sun and moon were emblematical of the chief staples of the place; the woollen trade and the mining interests. The old fulling-mills were locally termed tucking-mills, and the extent to which cloth-working was carried on in South Devon is shown by the prevalence of the surname Tucker.[29] [29] For what follows on the woollen trade I am greatly indebted to a paper by Mr. P. F. S. Amery in the _Transactions of the Devonshire Association_, 1879. The process of manufacture given by Westcote, in 1630, is as follows:-- "First, the gentleman farmer, or husbandman, sends his wool to the market, which is bought either by the comber or spinster, and they, the next week, bring it hither again in yarn, which the weaver buys, and the market following brings that hither again in cloth, when it is sold, either to the clothier, who sends it to London, or to the merchant, who, after it hath passed the fuller's mill, and sometimes the dyer's vat, transports it. The large quantities whereof cannot be well guessed, but best known to the custom-book, whereunto it yields no small commodity, and this is continued all the year through." The clothier was a man of some means, that bought the yarn or _abb_ in the Tuesday's market from Cornish and Tavistock spinners, who kept this branch of the trade pretty much to themselves. The worsted was spun into "tops"--and the name Toop is common now in the neighbourhood. Tops, the combed wool so called by poor cottagers, was made by them into chains to form the warp or framework of the fabric. One day a week the serge-maker assumed a long apron and met his weavers, the poor folk of the neighbourhood, who frequently hired their looms from him, paying him a shilling quarterly. He served out to them the proper proportions of _abb_ and worsted, with a certain quantity of glue to size the chain before tying it to the loom. This they took home with them, and wove at leisure, returning it the following week and receiving the price of their labour.