Kingsbridge is a market community and also visitor center in the South Hams area of Devon, England, with a population of 6,116 at the 2011 census. Two selecting wards birth the name of Kingsbridge (East & North). Their combined population at the above census was 4,381. It is positioned at the north end of the Kingsbridge Tidewater, a ria that encompasses the sea 6 miles southern of the town. It is the 3rd biggest settlement in the South Hams and is 32 miles (51 km) south-southwest of Exeter. The community developed around a bridge which was built in or before the 10th century between the imperial estates of Alvington, to the west, and Chillington, to the eastern, for this reason providing it the name of Kyngysbrygge ("King's bridge"). In 1219 the Abbot of Buckfast was given the right to hold a market there, as well as by 1238 the settlement had actually ended up being a borough. The estate remained in property of the abbot until the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when it was provided to Sir William Petre. Kingsbridge was never represented in Parliament or included by charter, the city government being by a portreeve. It lay within the numerous Stanborough.