West Devon has more places licensed to hold weddings than the city of Birmingham, which has twenty times as many people, according to new figures.

The borough has 34 venues approved for civil weddings and civil partnerships, figures compiled by The Wedding Venue List show.

Birmingham, with nearly 1.2 million residents, has 32.

For its size, West Devon has more choice than all but four council areas in England and Wales.

With 58 licensed venues for every 100,000 residents, it is fifth out of 317 council areas, behind the City of London, the Isles of Scilly, Westminster and its neighbour South Hams, and five times the average for England of 11.4.

Dartmoor accounts for many of them. Chagford alone has six, and seven more are around Yelverton, Princetown, Two Bridges and Dartmeet. But the list goes well beyond moorland inns.

Couples can marry at Lewtrenchard Manor near Lewdown, the Jacobean house that was once home to the Victorian parson Sabine Baring-Gould, who wrote the words of Onward, Christian Soldiers in 1865.

Or they can choose Hotel Endsleigh at Milton Abbot, built from 1810 as a fishing lodge and summer retreat for the Duke of Bedford, on a site chosen by the Duchess, with grounds laid out by Humphry Repton.

Gidleigh Park, the Two Bridges Hotel, the Bedford Hotel and Tavistock Town Hall are also on the list.

Across Devon, more than 4,000 weddings took place at licensed venues in 2023, according to the Office for National Statistics.

A spokesperson for The Wedding Venue List said: "West Devon has an extraordinary amount of choice for a rural district. You can marry in the house where Onward, Christian Soldiers was written, in a Regency lodge built for a duke or in a hotel in the middle of Dartmoor, and all 34 of the district's licensed venues are on one free map."

Every licensed wedding venue in West Devon - and across the country - can be found at https://weddingvenuelist.co.uk/venues-in/west-devon