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NOTE: Nymet Tracey, a hamlet in the parish of Bow, has been redirected here.
- the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia
Bow (#1 on map) (Latin: place at the arched bridge) is a village and civil parish in the Mid Devon District of Devon, England, about 8 miles west of Crediton. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 1,093 which was practically unchanged at the 2011 Census. There is an adjoining hamlet of Nymet Tracey which shares a church with Bow and much common history. Before 1974 Bow was in the Crediton Rural District
The main settlement was originally at Nymet Tracey, a mile south of Bow's present location. Nymet Tracey had parliamentary representation in late Anglo-Saxon times, from 940 onwards and is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086.
Bow, due to its location, failed to attract enough trade to justify its status as a town and remained a "street village" or one of Devon's many "failed towns". The market ceased in 1792. Nymet Tracey was effectively absorbed into Bow following two fires which destroyed the hamlet (then about 60-80 cottages) in 1833 and 1835, after which the bulk of the populace of Nymet Tracey moved to Bow. Nymet Tracey's church, St Martin's at the time, continued to serve Bow. The influx of people did not halt its decline and by 1850 Bow/Nymet Tracey was described as a "small, decayed market town". The St Martin's Day fair, first recorded in 1259, ceased c.1900.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Bow was spiritually divided between the Church of England, the Congregationalists and the Plymouth Brethren.
For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Bow, Devon.
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Registration Districts
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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.
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- 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.
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- 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.)
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