One of a large number of streets on the post-war Ham Estate that owes its name to a well-known English Abbey or medieval Priory, Buckfast Close leads into Tewksbury Close and onto Ham House itself. Of the various thematically-linked thoroughfares in the area, Buckfast Close is undoubtedly named after the abbey that’s closest of the bunch to Plymouth. The famous abbey in Buckfastleigh standing little more than fifteen miles away along the Devon Expressway. Although the present Benedictine House was only established in the late nineteenth century the grand building stands on the site of richest and one of the oldest monasteries in the South West – there was monastery established there almost fifty years before the Norman Conquest.
The name “Buckfast” itself is of a very straightforward origin; recorded in 1046 as Bucfaesten it comes from two Old English words “bucc” and “faesten” gives us a “place of shelter for bucks” (male deer).
