Barnstaple centre was at nearby . The station building still exists, and can be viewed on-line from a webcam mounted on Barnstaple Civic Centre. A separate "Barnstaple" station, renamed Barnstaple (Victoria Road) in 1949, was opened to the east of the town in 1873 as the terminus of the Devon and Somerset Railway, eventually a part of the Great Western Railway. A junction was later provided to allow trains access to Barnstaple Junction and these ran through to Ilfracombe. It was closed in 1970. There are a selection of well-regarded primary and secondary state schools and a tertiary college in Barnstaple.
Mayor of Barnstaple which the lord's steward, not the mayor, presided, that the borough was taxed by the county assessors, and that the lord held the various assizes which the burgesses claimed. Indeed, the purported ancient royal charter supposedly granted by the Anglo-Saxon King Aethelstan (d.939) (King of the Anglo-Saxons from 924 to 927 and King of the English from 927 to 939) and held by the corporation, from which it claimed its borough status, was suspected to be a forgery. Since 1974 Barnstaple has been a civil parish governed by a town council. An incomplete list of the mayors of Barnstaple between