 A road was proposed from Launceston, crossing the river at this ford near Thomas Haydock Reibey's property of Entally.The name may have been given by surveyor George Frankland after Hadspen house and garden, an estate in Somerset, England.By the 1840s Hadspen was a small cluster of houses near "Reibey's ford", and the river crossing was now on the main road from Launceston.