The main (toll) road (A381) between Totnes and Newton Abbot was built in the early 1800s.
The first reference to the New Bridge Inn is in the Census Return for Littlehempston in 1851, when Thomas Tippett and his large family were living there. It was presumably built in the 1840s. Thomas Tippett had been the proprietor of the Church House Inn in the Littlehempston, Census of 1841, and was the Enumerator for that census.
He continued to live in the Bridge Inn until the 1871 Census. By 1881, his daughter Harriet Elizabeth had taken it over. In 1891, Robert Woodley, listed as blacksmith and victualler, was living there, together with his wife and brother Frederick, an apprentice. In 1901 Frederick Woodley, blacksmith, was living there with his wife Alice.
We have information about the Bridge Inn (the ‘New’ had by now been dropped) in the early twentieth century from Joan Hawkins’ memoir ‘When Grandma Was A Little Girl.’ Her family, the Hutchings, took it over in 1906, and left in 1918 to live at Gatcombe Mill.
In the early days, there was a blacksmith’s forge at the back, and a working quarry behind. The forge may have been located there to remake the tools for the quarrying, which would have needed more than occasional sharpening.
John Hawkins said that there was also a cockpit at the back in the early days.
We do not know when the name was changed to the Pig and Whistle.
