Devonshire, which occupies rather more than one-twenty-second of the
whole area of England and Wales, is one of the largest counties in the
British Islands, being exceeded in size only by Yorkshire and Lincoln in
England, by Inverness and Argyll in Scotland, and by Cork in Ireland.
Its extreme length from east to west, measured along a horizontal line
drawn through the middle of the county, starting at the Dorsetshire
border half-way between Lyme Cobb and the Seven Rocks Point, passing
close to the city of Exeter, and reaching to the point where the river
Ottery enters the county, is 67 miles; exactly the same as that of the
county of Somerset. Its greatest breadth, from Countisbury Foreland on
the north coast to Prawle Point on the south, is 71 miles. It may be
added that a longer east and west line can be drawn only in Yorkshire
and Sussex, and a longer meridional line only in Yorkshire and Lincoln.
The area of the "Ancient" or "Geographical" county of Devonshire,
according to the revised return furnished by the Ordnance Department,
is 1,667,154 acres, or 2605 square miles. Compared with the counties
that adjoin it, it is two-and-a-half times the size of Dorset, it is
roughly twice as large as Cornwall, and it is more than half as large
again as Somerset. It is fifteen times as large as Rutland, it is
about half the size of Yorkshire, and its area is less than that of
Lincolnshire by only 48 square miles.
[Illustration: Glen Lyn, near Lynmouth]
Although usually said to be irregular in form, the outline of the
county has a certain degree of symmetry, being roughly shaped like a
life-guardsman's cuirass, with nearly equal sides, with a small hollow
at the top or north coast, and a much larger one at the bottom or south
coast.
Devonshire, like Kent and Cornwall, is bounded on two sides by the sea,
having the Bristol Channel on the north and north-west, and the English
Channel on the south. On its western side the river Tamar, with its
tributary the Ottery, forms almost the whole of the frontier between it
and Cornwall. The eastern and north-eastern border is less definite,
but is roughly marked by Exmoor and the Blackdown Hills, which partly
separate Devonshire from Somerset. The short length of frontier between
Devonshire and Dorsetshire is marked by no natural feature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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