[1] It is a centre of tourism and is home to Buckfast Abbey, the South Devon Railway, the Buckfastleigh Butterfly Farm and Otter Sanctuary, the Tomb of Squire Richard Cabell and The Valiant Soldier.
Geographically, Buckfastleigh straddles the confluence of two small streams from Dartmoor which feed into the River Dart just to the east of the town.
Buckfastleigh town centre is now an area of mostly late eighteenth- to early twentieth-century buildings with an interesting collection of private dwellings, commercial and retail properties and public houses which retain many, if not all, of their original features, styles and character.
The town centre during the first half of the twentieth century was a lively almost self-sufficient community with locally based employment and a large building programme of local authority housing initiated by Buckfastleigh Urban District Council which commenced in the 1920s and extended the town to the south west and the north west.
[3] Land was also made available at this time for further public facilities which included Victoria Park, the tennis courts and the swimming pool.
The new primary school was built in 1875, while the railway line from Buckfastleigh and Ashburton to Totnes had been opened in 1872 (it lost its passenger trains in 1958; and the goods service in 1962).
[5] He was the subject of a local legend which relates that on the night of his death, black hounds breathing fire and smoke raced over Dartmoor and surrounded Brook House, howling.
Vintage steam locomotives and carriages in the tradition of a bygone age are used; it offers unique scenery only seen from the railway.
On 25 February 1539, William Petre arrived at Buckfast and declared the abbey to be dissolved by the order of King Henry VIII.
His travelling companion Anscar Vonier became the next abbot and pledged to fulfil his dying wish, namely to rebuild the abbey.
The curly-coated Devon Rex cat breed was first discovered in Buckfastleigh in the 1960s and is named after the county in which the town is situated.