[4] The original Anglo-Saxon names for the village were Hlidaford or Hlidan, from hlid, meaning a cover or lid, referring to the almost perfect concealment of the river beneath the chasm at the bridge, and ford (crossing).

In the reign of Edward the Confessor it was the most populous centre in Devon after Exeter, but Domesday Book relates that forty houses had lain waste since the Norman Conquest.

[5] Lydford Castle is first mentioned in 1216, when it was granted to William Briwere, and was shortly afterwards fixed as the prison of the stannaries and the meeting-place of the Forest Courts of Dartmoor.

In 1238 the borough, which had hitherto been crown demesne, was bestowed by Henry III on Richard of Cornwall, who in 1268 obtained a grant of a Wednesday market and a three days fair at the feast of St Petrock.

During the English Civil War, Lydford was the haunt of the then notorious Gubbins band, a gang of ruthless cut-throats and highwaymen, who took advantage of the turmoil of the times to ply their villainry.

It was a 3-storey tower, commanding a strategic view over much of the surrounding countryside, and was eminently defensible, with the Gorge on one side, and the land sloping steeply away from it.

An order of Parliament during the reign of Henry VIII describes the prison in 1512 as "one of the most hanious, contagious and detestable places in the realm"; Lydford Law was a by-word for injustice.

The prison is commemorated in the poem "Lydford Law" by the Tavistock poet William Browne: I've often hear of Lydford law, How in the morn they hang and draw, And sit in judgement after At the time of Cromwell's Commonwealth, the castle was entirely in ruins, but in the 18th century it was restored and again used as a prison and as the meeting-place of the manor and borough courts.