Place:Bickleigh (near Plymouth), Devon, England

Watchers
NameBickleigh (near Plymouth)
Alt namesBicheleiasource: Domesday Book (1985) p 77
Bicheliasource: Domesday Book (1985) p 77
Bicheliesource: Domesday Book (1985) p 77
TypeAncient parish, Civil parish
Coordinates50.442°N 4.082°W
Located inDevon, England
See alsoRoborough Hundred, Devon, Englandhundred in which the parish was located
Plympton St. Mary Rural, Devon, Englandrural district in which the parish was located 1894-1974
South Hams District, Devon, Englanddistrict municipality covering the area since 1974
source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
source: Family History Library Catalog

NOTE: There is another parish in Devon named Bickleigh. It is near Tiverton in the Mid Devon District.


the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Bickleigh (#1 on map) is a small village and former parish on the southern edge of Dartmoor in Devon, England. In the 21st century it has a population of about 50 people. Since 1974 it is in the South Hams District; before 1974 it was in the Plympton St. Mary Rural District. The parish is about seven miles north of Plymouth city centre and is part of the modern electoral ward called Bickleigh and Shaugh. At the 2011 census the ward population was 4,723.

The village church has a tower of the 15th century but the rest of the building is the work of Charles Fowler, 1838. One of the church's two baptismal fonts is 15th century. There is a fine monument to Sir Manasseh Masseh Lopes (1755-1831) of Maristow House.

The following description from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72 is provided by the website A Vision of Britain Through Time (University of Portsmouth Department of Geography).

"BICKLEIGH, a parish in Plympton-St. Mary [registration] district, Devon; on the Cat [or Catte] water, and on the South Devon and Tavistock railway, near Dartmoor forest, 6 miles NNE of Plymouth. It has a station on the railway: and its Post Town is Tamerton, under Plymouth. Acres: 2,323. Real property: £2,070. Population: 402. Houses: 73. The property is all in one estate. Very beautiful and romantic scenery lies along the Cat water The living is a vicarage, united with the [perpetual] curacy of Sheepstor, in the diocese of Exeter. Value: £253. Patron: Sir M. Lopes, Bart. The church, excepting the tower, was rebuilt in 1839; and it contains the tomb of Sir Nicholas Slanning, whose death forms the catastrophe of Mrs. Bray's novel of "Fitz of Fitzford."
Image:Plympton St. Mary RD 1931 1944.png

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 Bickleigh, South Hams. 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.