Cooper Street is one of the narrowest streets in the town, and as the name confirms, it was originally the barrel-making centre of Bideford.

‘Hogsheads’, which are the large wooden barrels used to transport and store tobacco, were made in this street en-masse, primarily these barrels were used for transporting goods to the American colonies.

When Bideford became the third largest port in England, the mayor decided the town had become dirty and untidy and, as such, needed cleaning up. With this in mind, he instructed The Corporation to place empty ‘hogsheads’ at strategic points around the town.

He then decreed that citizens should put their rubbish into these ‘hogsheads’. When full the corporation would remove these barrels of rubbish and replace them with empty ones. By implementing this simple system the mayor of Bideford had unwittingly created England’s first municipal rubbish collection system.