There are eight

River Avons situated within Great Britain.

The name Avon, comes from the Brythonic language and stems from its word for river, abona.

Brythonic was an ancient, insular Celtic language of the British Isles spoken between the Iron Age (1200 BC) and the fifth century, by a race of people called Britons.

The words River Avon actually mean River River, which is a tautology, the mergence of two words that mean the same thing, taken from two different languages.

There are four River Avons in England, three River Avons in Scotland and one River Avon in Wales, although this Welsh river is spelt Afan, but pronounced in just the same way.

The Welsh word for river is Afon, also prounounced in the same way as avon, meaning River Avon in Welsh is called Afon Afan, another tautology, also meaning River River.

ENGLAND'S RIVER AVONS

1.)Both the longest English and the longest British River Avon, this river travels for eighty five miles through the English counties of Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire and Gloucestershire, from it's source at Naseby in Northamptonshire until it merges with the River Severn at Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire. This River Avon is also known as the Warwickshire Avon- as it travels through more of that county than any other - or Shakespeare's Avon- as it travels through William Shakespeare's birth place of Stratford - upon - Avon. It is here at Stratford that the river connects with the Stratford and Avon Canal.

2.)The second English River Avon also known as the Lower Avon or Bristol Avon travels for seventy miles from its source at Old Sodbury in Gloucestershire until it merges with the River Severn Estuary at Avonmouth near the city of Bristol.

This river runs through the English counties of Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Somerset, the cities of Bristol and Bath and merges with the River Kennet at Bath to form part of the Kennet and Avon Canal.

3.)English River Avon number three is a sixty mile long river which rises in Pewsey, Wiltshire and travels through the counties of Wiltshire, Hampshire and Dorset on England's south coast before draining into the English Channel at Mudeford in Dorset.

This river is synonomous for having more species of fish than any other British river.

4.) English River Avon number four is the baby of the family, situated soley in the county of Devon and is only seven miles long.

The river rises on the moorlands of Dartmoor National Park and flows southwards towards the south Devon coastal town of Bigbury - on - Sea, where the tiny river drains into the English Channel.

Britain's longest River Avon, at Stratford - upon - Avon, Warwickshire.

SCOTLAND'S RIVER AVONS

1.)The longest River Avon in Scotland is the forty mile long river that rises at the foothills of Ben MacDui then travels for ten miles before entering the remote and isolated Loch Avon, situated 3,700 feet up on the Cairngorm plateau in the Cairngorms National Park. The river travels on through the Forest of Glenavon and the Highland villages of Tomintoul and Strathavon before joining the River Spey at Ballindalloch in Banffshire.

This River Avon is the larger River Spey's longest tributary and is considered to be Scotland's best salmon river.

2.)Scottish River Avon number two is a twenty four mile long tributary of the River Clyde also known as Avon Water. This river rises near the town of Irvine in Ayreshire and flows in a north easterly direction before merging with the River Clyde between the two Lanarkshire towns of Hamilton and Motherwell.

3.)Scottish River Avon number three rises at Cumbernault in Lanarkshire and travels just eleven miles through the towns of Falkirk, Avonbridge and Avon gorge before draining into the Firth of Forth at Grangemouth on Scotland's east coast.

The 810 foot long by 86 foot high, Avon Aqueduct designed by Thomas Telford and built between 1818and 1822 - the largest of it's kind in Scotland and the second largest in Britain - carries the thirty one and a half mile long Union Canal over this River Avon, located outside the town of Linlithgow in West Lothian.

WALES' RIVER AVON

The Welsh River Avon, also known as Afon Afan, rises in the village of Cymer in the Vale of Glamorgan and travels south westerly through the Afan Forest and Afan Argoed Country Park for just fourteen miles before reaching Port Talbot on Wales' south coast, where it drains into Swansea Bay situated in the Bristol Channel.

This River Avon was the site of a total bridge collapse in December 1985, when the road bridge the PontYnys - y -Gwas, suddenly and unexpectedly plunged into the river near Port Talbot in West Glamorgan, due to metal corrosion. There were no injuries or fatalities.

NB -The English pronounce avon=ay - vonand the Welsh and the Scots pronounce avon=av - on.

England and Wales , and which riverAvon are we talking about ,and then Afon in Wales .

The River Avon/ˈeɪvən/is a river in the southwest of England. To distinguish it from a number of other rivers of the same name, it is often called the Bristol Avon. The name 'Avon' is a cognate of the Welsh word afon, meaning 'river'.

The Avon rises just north of the village of Acton Turville in South Gloucestershire, before flowing through Wiltshire into Somerset. In its lower reaches from Bath (where it meets the Kennet and Avon Canal  to the Severn Estuary at Avonmouth near Bristol , the river is navigable and is known as the Avon Navigation. The Avon is the 19th longest river in the United Kingdom, at 83 miles (134km), although there are just 19 miles (31km) as the crow flies between the source and its mouth in the Severn Estuary. The catchment area is 2,220 square kilometres (860sqmi). View down the Avon to the Severn from Clifton Down, 1842 The distribution of archaeological finds suggests that the western end of the river between Bath and Avonmouth formed a border between the Dobunni and Durotriges during the late Iron Age, prior to the Roman conquest of Britain. Further east, between Bath and what is now Wiltshire, it may also have formed a border of the territory ruled by the Belgae. After the Roman occupation the river formed a boundary between the lands of the Hwicce (which became Mercia and the kingdom of Wessex. The river Avon had been navigable from Bristol to Bath during the early years of the 13th century but construction of mills on the river forced its closure. The flood plain of the Avon, on which the city centre of Bath is built, has an altitude of about 59ft (18m) abovesea level.^[77]The river, once an unnavigable series of braided streams broken up by swamps and ponds, has been managed by weirs into a single channel. Periodic flooding, which shortened the life of many buildings in the lowest part of the city, was normal until major flood control works were completed in the 1970s.

The Bristol Avon Navigation, which runs the 15 miles (24km) from the Kennet and Avon Canal at Hanham Lock to the Bristol Channel at Avonmouth, was constructed between 1724 and 1727, following legislation passed by Queen Anne,by a company of proprietors and the engineer John Hore of Newbury. The first cargo of  'Deal boards, Pig-Lead and Meal' arrived in Bath in December 1727. It is now administered by the Canal & River Trust.

S.S. Dunbrody stranded in the 1890s owing to the high tidal range

Throughout Bristol's history the Avon Gorge has been an important transport route, carrying the River Avon, major roads and two railways. The Bristol Channel has a very high tidal range of 15 metres (49ft), second only to Bay of Fundy in Eastern Canada; and the gorge is relatively narrow and meandering, making it notoriously difficult to navigate. Several vessels have grounded in the gorge including the SS Demerara soon after her launch in 1851, the schooner Gipsy in 1878, the steam tug Black Eagle in 1861 and the Llandaff City.

In 1877, Halfpenny Bridge, a pedestrian toll bridge crossing the river from Bath Spa railway station to Widcombe, collapsed with the loss of about 10 lives amongst a large crowd going to the Bath and West Agricultural show.

The Avon has flooded several times in its recorded history. These floods include the one in 1799/1800 damaging Pulteney Bridge. Various points along the river including the valley around Freshford are at risk of alluvial flooding, as a result of sediment entering the river and narrowing the channel. To help cope with this some areas on the banks of the river are designated as a functional floodplain to cope with increased flow volumes. The potential changes to weather patterns as a result of climate change suggest that further measures are likely to be needed to protect the population from flooding risk. A tidal surge, combined with high water levels from the flooding of the surrounding area caused flooding in the city of Bristol..

And why not the River Avon , Well, I think Eric Hemery is right when, in the pages of High Dartmoor, he quotes a moorman who suggests that Aune or Auna should be the name of this pretty river, given that there are lots of Avons and only one Aune.So let’s call it Aune on Dartmoor, though it might be the Avon as it winds a gentler course through the South Hams. afon in Wales

And why not the River Avon

 Well,  I think Eric Hemery is right when, in the pages of High Dartmoor, he quotes a moorman who suggests that Aune or Auna should be the name of this pretty river, given that there are lots of Avons and only one Aune. So let’s call it Aune on Dartmoor, though it might be the Avon as it winds a gentler course through the South Hams.

Aune Head defines Dartmoor for me.

 A little while ago I was asked to write a piece for an anthology on a wild place that defines Dartmoor.  After some deliberation I chose Aune Head, given that it is unspoiled and not usually very crowded. I often ponder on the tinner’s hut there, imagining the man who must have lived and worked in that solitary place. The great mire is vast and untouched for all his efforts, with the cry of the curlew being one of the few sounds to break into the great silence. In the early summer the skylarks fill the air round about, and a lonely heron might flap overhead.

Boggy ground it is too if you choose to explore in search of the exquisite mire flowers. A slight trudge through the mud on its edge reveals the Luckombe Stone, that great boulder that seems pointless in the landscape, yet somehow completes the view.

It must have all been a familiar scene to the traders and hucksters who used the nearby Sandy Way to get to the market at Princetown’s War Prison so that they might barter with those incarcerated French and Americans two centuries ago.

 Sometimes, if you lie on the edge of the mire and close your eyes, it seems as though you can almost hear the gossip of those ancient travellers above the soughing of the breeze through the moorgrass.

When I was a small child, this was only a country of the imagination for me. My first contact with the Aune was a childhood picnic at Shipley Bridge. Wandering away from the others I climbed up to Black Tor and looked northwards to these distant and yet to be explored hills. A few years later I spent my first night bivouacking without a tent on Dartmoor, in a hollow on the hillside opposite Huntingdon Warren.

The Aune has some of the best bathing pools on Dartmoor, many of them a few minutes stroll up from Shipley. We used to bathe in the Aune’s chill waters, dousing our heads under the many little waterfalls where the river tumbles through Long-a-Traw (Long Trough). We would sunbathe ourselves dry, turning the pages of William Crossing’s Guide to Dartmoor, before continuing our exploration of the Moor. Sometimes we would meet and talk with Brother Adam of Buckfast Abbey, who kept his bees here to bring the taste of the moorland heather to the famous honey.

Long-a-Traw is one of the finest valleys on Dartmoor, ruined only by the dreadful concrete of the Avon Dam (and I revert to Avon for the name of this appalling intrusion) towards its head.

I mourn for the archaeology that was lost when the reservoir was built. More might go yet, for the dam was designed to be raised if circumstances made it necessary. To imprison a moorland river behind a dam, letting it pass only in fits and starts is a crime against nature.

Still, archaeology remains and one of my favourite areas is Rider’s Rings, a perfect place for a rest on a summer walk, though I do hope the bracken will be tackled soon. I like the little clapper bridge on the Aune above Huntingdon Cross.

I have stopped here for lunch on countless occasions, both on my own and with considerable numbers of Dartmoor walkers, fellow spirits in discovery, many of them now sadly passed on.

The focus for walks was often Broada Falls, that great mass of boulders through which the river forces its waters on the first stretch of its journey from Aune Head. I can remember, on one of my earliest visits, the late and much-missed Dartmoor expert Joe Turner showing me the ancient stone vermin traps just a little downstream.

From the high hills around, the slopes of Huntingdon Warren or the White-a-Barrows, the Aune winds through the land like a blue ribbon against the yellow, brown and green of the surrounding moorland, as it reflects the blue of the sky on summer days. I have seen it as a sprawl of raging white foam after prolonged Dartmoor thunderstorms, though that is rare, for despite a fairly rapid descent the Aune is a gentle river. Above the reservoir it is quintessentially a high moorland river, free of much vegetation beyond the occasional overhanging rowan.

Below the reservoir the trees creep in to the landscape, with rhododendrons in the lower stages. I always think it a pity that Brent Moor House has gone, just a few low walls to mark its passing. I used to know a lot of moor folk who remembered it, and a few walkers who had stayed there during its brief incarnation as a youth hostel. Nearby, hidden high in the bushes, is the memorial to the young daughter of the Meynell family, killed when out horse riding in 1865.

Shipley Bridge is fortunate in that it stands some yards away from the nearby car park, thereby having its ancient view preserved without too much 21st century intrusion.

But even though the river ceases to be a moorland water at this point, I think we should continue our journey down through Didworthy, using the public right of way, to Lydia Bridge and then South Brent, where the Aune leaves the National Park.

I always think Lydia Bridge is one of the delights of Dartmoor and is too seldom visited. And what a beautiful name. South Brent should be visited too, not least as a homage to William Crossing who lived and explored Dartmoor from this useful base, using the valley of the Aune as an approach to so much of Dartmoor.

The Aune is a beautiful river and it is a privilege to walk here in the footsteps of Dartmoor’s greatest writer, the incomparable William Crossing.

There is a track through Aune Head Mire that can be taken with safety by one who knows it.

Fox Tor Mire once bore a very bad name. The only convict who really got away from Princetown and was not recaptured was last seen taking a beeline for Fox Tor Mire.

One afternoon, in the year 1851,I was in the Walkham valley above Merrivale Bridge digging into what at the time I fondly believed was a tumulus, but which I subsequently discovered to be a mound thrown up for the accommodation of rabbits, when a warren was contemplated on the slope of Mis Tor.

Charles Thomas  originally identified the former with The Rumps, a pre-Roman defended enclosure. More recently, he suggested that it might be Tintagel, the site of an important sub-Roman trading settlement, although its Romano-British status is not clear Vernilis may be the same as Ptolemy’s Οὐολίβα , perhaps near Liskeard (Strang 1997, 30); the correct Romano British form may have been *Verleua.

The Cosmographer’s form would have arisen by way of a transposition of -l- and -u-, the latter being miscopied as -n-.
The next name must be for *Fl Deruentione, the River Dart, so the Cosmographer’s eye may have moved from travelling along the spine of Cornwall, following the poorly known road along the centre of the peninsula, and he has possibly now turned his attention to the road south from Exeter, closer to the south Devon coast.

Deuionisso Statio and *Deruentio Statio which are wrongly divided in the text are probably unlocated Roman government establishments, perhaps tax offices.The latter may have lain in the Dart valley (Dart being Brittonic Deruentiu: , perhaps at Buckfastleigh or Totnes , and the former perhaps near Newton Abbot or elsewhere  on the River Teign.,Earliest times to present day

Definition of medieval

The adjective medieval literally means “of the Middle Ages,” i.e., the period between antiquity (the Roman world) and the early modern era 

Common chronological range

Historians most often treat the Middle Ages as roughly the 5th century to the 15th century: from the collapse of the Western Roman Empire (commonly dated 476) up to the Renaissance and early modern transitions around 1400–1500 

Standard subperiods and their usual dates

• Early Middle Ages: about 500–1000.
• High Middle Ages: about 1000–1300.
• Late Middle Ages: about 1300–1500.
  These are conventional labels; exact boundaries vary by region and by the historian’s focus 

What authors usually mean when they write “medieval”

• Broad cultural sense: the social, political, religious, and material world shaped by feudal institutions, Christendom, and post‑Roman societies in Europe between Late Antiquity and the Renaissance 
• In specialised works an author may narrow the term (for example, “medieval urban law” might mean 1100–1400), so check the author’s period definition in introductions or captions 

Origin and first use of the word

The English term derives from Latin medium aevum “middle age.” The modern English adjective (often spelled mediaeval earlier) was coined in the 19th century from that Latin phrase; recorded modern forms date from the early 1800s (commonly cited 1825 for the form medieval/mediaeval) 

Quick guidance for reading historical scripts

When you encounter “medieval” in a text, assume 5th–15th centuries unless the author states otherwise; for precise work always look for the author’s explicit chronological scope because usages and boundary years differ by topic and region 

Bronze Age time boundaries overview

The Bronze Age is a cultural-technical phase defined by the pervasive use of bronze (an alloy of copper with tin or arsenic), alongside associated changes in technology, trade, burial practice, and social organisation. Its absolute dates vary widely by region because metallurgy and associated cultural changes spread at different times. Below are commonly used regional ranges and practical guidance for tagging or labelling gazetteer entries.

Common regional date ranges

• Near East and Anatolia
  Early Bronze Age: c. 3300–2100 BCE; Middle Bronze Age: c. 2100–1600 BCE; Late Bronze Age: c. 1600–1200 BCE.
• Aegean (Greece and Cyclades)
  Early Bronze Age: c. 3000–2000 BCE; Middle Bronze Age: c. 2000–1600 BCE; Late Bronze Age: c. 1600–1100 BCE.
• Central and Western Europe
  Broad Bronze Age: c. 2300–800 BCE; subdivided (Early/Middle/Late) roughly as Early c. 2300–1500 BCE, Middle c. 1500–1200 BCE, Late c. 1200–800 BCE.
• British Isles (including Devon and Cornwall)
  Broad Bronze Age: c. 2500–800 BCE; Early Bronze Age often starts c. 2500–2000 BCE (after Late Neolithic/Beaker horizons), Late Bronze Age ends c. 800 BCE.
• South Asia (Indian subcontinent)
  Indus-related Bronze Age/Harappan: c. 3300–1300 BCE (mature Harappan c. 2600–1900 BCE); local Bronze-using traditions continue and overlap with early Iron use.
• East Asia
  Bronze Age in China: roughly c. 2000–771 BCE (Xia-Shang-Zhou sequences; Shang c. 1600–1046 BCE is strongly bronze-rich).
• The Americas and parts of Sub-Saharan Africa
  No true widespread Bronze Age phase comparable to Old World sequences; metallurgy often appears much later and in different forms.

Practical guidance for mapping and gazetteer work

• Use region-specific ranges rather than a single global boundary.
• For ambiguous or single-site reports, prefer relative labels: Early Bronze Age, Middle Bronze Age, Late Bronze Age, or Bronze Age (broad)with a numeric range (e.g., Bronze Age c. 2500–800 BCE).
• Where chronology is uncertain, record both: cultural label(Bronze Age) and confidence/precision(e.g., high if radiocarbon dated; low if typological only).
• Include key local markers in metadata: metallurgy present; Beaker/urnfield/bronze-ritual features; radiocarbon dates range; typology links.
• Allow fields for overlapping phases (e.g., “Late Neolithic / Early Bronze Age transitional”) and for caveats like reuse or later disturbance.

Why ranges differ and how to communicate that

• Start and end dates depend on: first local alloy production; availability of tin or copper sources and trade; cultural adoption of bronze technologies; and the arrival of ironworking.
• Use wording that communicates variability: “Bronze Age (regional: c. 2500–800 BCE)”or “Bronze Age — British Isles convention: c. 2500–800 BCE”.
• When precision matters, attach dating evidence: radiocarbon ranges, stratigraphic context, or diagnostic artefact types.

Short recommended labels for database fields

• Period label: Bronze Age
• Region qualifier: e.g., British Isles
• Numeric range: e.g., c. 2500–800 BCE
• Subdivision: Early / Middle / Late (if known)
• Dating confidence: High / Medium / Low
• Dating evidence: Radiocarbon; typology; stratigraphy; historical reference

The suffix ‘ton’ constitutes a sort of test word,” says Mr. Isaac Taylor, “ by which we are able to discriminate the Anglo-Saxon settlements.”1 “A tun or ‘ton ’ was a place
surrounded by a hedge, or rudely fortified by a palisade”

The passage you quoted is part of the author’s argument that Plympton’s name is unmistakably Anglo‑Saxon, and that the key to recognising this lies in the suffix ‑ton. The PDF you have open confirms this discussion in its treatment of early Plympton history .

🏰 What ‑tonActually Signifies

The core point is that ‑ton(Old English tūn) originally meant:

• An enclosed place— literally a fenced or hedged area

• A defended homestead or settlement— often with a palisade

• A farmstead that could grow into a village or manor

So when you see a place‑name ending in ‑ton, you are almost always looking at:

• A Saxon foundation, or

• A Saxon renamingof an older site they took over.

This is why Isaac Taylor calls it a “test word”: it reliably marks Anglo‑Saxon occupation or administrative control.