The old Devon was a beautiful postcard. The new Devon is a living letter—still being written, still being posted, still surprising its own authors.
Not by erasing the old, but by refusing to be fossilised by it. This is the story of a county that has stopped trying to be England’s memory card and started being its laboratory. Let’s be honest about the “old Devon.” For decades, the brand was nostalgia. Tourists didn’t visit Devon—they returned to it. The same B&Bs. The same pasty shops. The same arguments about jam-first vs. cream-first. devon - redefining devon
Would you like a shorter version for a magazine sidebar, or a data-focused addendum on the economic impacts of this shift? The old Devon was a beautiful postcard
How Britain’s timeless county is breaking its own mould—without breaking its spirit. This is the story of a county that
For generations, the name “Devon” conjured a postcard-perfect slideshow: cream teas on rain-speckled cottage windowsills, the smugglers’ coves of Salcombe, the wild, windswept majesty of Dartmoor’s granite tors. It was a place of predictable loveliness —reassuring, static, and deeply safe.