 As of 1831 there was a settlement named Hadspen near a ford of the South Esk River . 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 . Hadspen Post Office opened on 1 November 1849 , though the town was not declared in the government gazette until January 1866 . A bridge was constructed in the early 1840s replacing the often impassable ford , and during the next century the bridge was often repaired and sometimes replaced . 
