Place:Beer, Devon, England

Watchers
NameBeer
Alt namesBeersource: from redirect
Bearesource: Oxford: English Place Names (1960) p 35
Berasource: Oxford: English Place Names (1960) p 35
Beresource: Oxford: English Place Names (1960) p 35
TypeChapelry, Civil parish
Coordinates50.7°N 3.1°W
Located inDevon, England
See alsoSeaton, Devon, Englandancient parish in which it was a chapelry
Colyton Hundred, Devon, Englandhundred in which it was located
Seaton and Beer, Devon, Englandcivil parish in which Beer was located 1866-1894
Axminster Rural, Devon, Englandrural district in which the town was located 1894-1974
East Devon District, Devon, Englandcovering the area since 1974
the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

The village of Beer (#5 on map) is in southeast Devon, England, on Lyme Bay. Since 1974 it has been part of the East Devon District. The population of the electoral ward called Beer and Branscombe was 1,824 at the 2011 census.

Prior to the formation of district municipalities in Devon in 1974, Beer was in the Axminster Rural District. Between 1866 and 1894 it was part of the civil parish of Seaton and Beer. The two communities have been separate parishes since 1894. Before 1866 Beer had been a chapelry within the parish of Seaton.

Beer lies about two kilometres west of Seaton, about 35 kilometres east of the city centre of Exeter and 13 kilometres east of Sidmouth.

The village of Beer is situated on the 95-mile long Jurassic Coast, and its picturesque cliffs, including Beer Head, form part of the South West Coast Path. It is a pretty coastal village that grew up around a smugglers' cove and caves which were once used to store contraband goods. Many of the buildings are faced with flint, a hard glassy stone found in the local chalk rock.

The name is not derived from the drink, but from the old Anglo-Saxon word "bearu" ("grove"), referring to the original forestation that surrounded the town. A brook winds its way in an open conduit alongside the main road down to the sea.

Image:Axminster RD small.png

Historically, the main sources of income for the village included fishing and lace production. There was also an important stone quarry about 3/4 miles west of the village. There is no harbour and boats are winched up the beach. Fresh fish is sold nearby. Nowadays small electrically driven winches using steel cables or tractors are located on the beach to haul boats in. Higher up is an old manual capstan operated by up to 20 men, now disused.

The shape of the coastline allowed local seafarers to operate in weather conditions when other towns could not, because it is protected from the prevailing westerly winds by Beer Head and the chalk cliffs which are the furthest outcrop of limestone on the southwest coast.

Devon Library's Local Studies Service provides an extract from Devon by W.G.Hoskins (1954) which expands on Beer's industry in the 19th century.

Research Tips

(revised Jul 2021)

  • Ordnance Survey Map of Devonshire North and Devonshire South are large-scale maps covering the whole of Devon between them. They show the parish boundaries when Rural Districts were still in existence and before the mergers of parishes that took place in 1935 and 1974. When expanded the maps can show many of the small villages and hamlets inside the parishes. These maps are now downloadable for personal use but they can take up a lot of computer memory.
  • GENUKI has a selection of maps showing the boundaries of parishes in the 19th century. The contribution from "Know Your Place" on Devon is a huge website yet to be discovered in detail by this contributor.
  • Devon has three repositories for hands-on investigation of county records. Each has a website which holds their catalog of registers and other documents.
  • There is, however, a proviso regarding early records for Devon. Exeter was badly hit in a "blitz" during World War II and the City Library, which then held the county archives, was burnt out. About a million books and historic documents went up in smoke. While equivalent records--particularly wills--are quite easy to come by for other English counties, some records for Devon and surrounding counties do not exist.
  • Devon Family History Society Mailing address: PO Box 9, Exeter, EX2 6YP, United Kingdom. The society has branches in various parts of the county. It is the largest Family History Society in the United Kingdom. The website has a handy guide to each of the parishes in the county and publishes the registers for each of the Devon dioceses on CDs.
  • This is the home page to the GENUKI Devon website. It has been updated since 2015 and includes a lot of useful information on each parish.
  • Devon has a Online Parish Clerk (OPC) Project which can be reached through GENUKI. Only about half of the parishes have a volunteer contributing local data. For more information, consult the website, especially the list at the bottom of the homepage.
  • Magna Britannia, Volume 6 by Daniel Lysons and Samuel Lysons. A general and parochial history of the county. Originally published by T Cadell and W Davies, London, 1822, and placed online by British History Online. This is a volume of more than 500 pages of the history of Devon, parish by parish. It is 100 years older than the Victoria County Histories available for some other counties, but equally thorough in its coverage. Contains information that may have been swept under the carpet in more modern works.
  • There is a cornucopia of county resources at Devon Heritage. Topics are: Architecture, Census, Devon County, the Devonshire Regiment, Directory Listings, Education, Genealogy, History, Industry, Parish Records, People, Places, Transportation, War Memorials. There are fascinating resources you would never guess that existed from those topic titles. (NOTE: There may be problems reaching this site. One popular browser provider has put a block on it. This may be temporary, or it may be its similarity in name to the Devon Heritage Centre at Exeter.)
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Beer, Devon. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.