Barnstaple play at Park School. In 1975, Barnstaple was the home of Norman Scott, the male model who was blackmailing local MP and Liberal Party Leader Jeremy Thorpe over an alleged sexual relationship between the two of them. According to the investigative journalists Simon Freeman and Barry Penrose, Thorpe’s colleague David Holmes phoned an accomplice, ex-airline pilot Andrew Newton, with instructions to intimidate Scott, whom he would meet at a hotel in Barnstaple. But it was a bad line, and Newton spent time hanging around Dunstable in Bedfordshire. Barnstaple Barnstaple ( or ) is the main town of North Devon, England
Barnstaple it developed other industries, such as shipbuilding, foundries and sawmills. Its Victorian market survives, with its high glass and timber roof on iron columns. Barnstaple railway station is the terminus of a branch line from Exeter, known as the Tarka Line. Since 1974, Barnstaple has been a civil parish governed by town council. The parish itself had a population of 24,033 and including the satellite settlements known as the Barnstaple Town Area, it is 53,514. The old spelling Barnstable is now obsolete, but is retained by an American county and town and is still sometimes used for Bideford or Barnstable