Tiv'erton, a municipal borough of Devonshire, 14 1/2 miles N. by E. of Exeter, stands pleasantly on an eminence between the confluent Exe and Loman, and got the name Twy-ford-ton from two fords upon those two rivers. Little save the gateway remains of the castle of the Earls of Devon, built in 1106, and dismantled after its capture by Fairfax in 1(545. St Peter's, a Perpendicular church of the 15th century, was mostly rebuilt in 1855; and other edifices are the town-hall (1864), late Venetian in style, with a tower 80 feet high, the market-house (1830), the infirmary (1852), the Greenway almshouses (1517), Waldron's almshouses (1579), and the grammar-school (1604), which was founded by Peter Blundell (1520-1601), and has an endowment of £1100 a year. Among its scholars have been Bishops Bull, Hayter, Conybeare, and Temple, A. Hayward, 'Jack' Russell, R. D. Blackmore, and his hero, John Ridd. New school buildings in the Tudor style were erected in 1880 at a cost of £20,000. Tiverton was a great seat of the woollen trade from 1353 till 1700 and afterwards, but lace-making is now its staple industry, the lace-factory, employing 1500 workpeople, having been established in 1816 by Mr John Heathcoat (1783-1861), inventor of the bobbin-net frame. Cosway, the painter, and Mrs Cowley, dramatist, were natives; whilst Lord Palmerston for thirty years (1835-65) represented Tiverton, which was chartered by James I., but lost its two members in 1885. Pop. (1851) 11,144; (1871) 10,025; (1901) 10,382. See works by M. Dunsford (1790), W. Harding (2 vols. 1844-47), and F. J. Smith (1893).