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Bradninch (#3 on map) is a civil parish, a small town and former manor in Devon, England, lying about three miles south of Cullompton (#11). Much of the surrounding farmland belongs to the Duchy of Cornwall. From 1894 until 1974 Bradninch was in the Tiverton Rural District and since 1974 in the Mid Devon District.
For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Bradninch.
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).
- "BRADNINCH, a small town and a parish in Tiverton [registration] district, Devon. The town stands on an eminence, 1 mile N of Hele [railway] station, and 2 SW of Collumpton. It was anciently called Braines; and it gives the title of Baron, under that name, to the Dukes of Cornwall. It dates from the Saxon times; and is thought by some to be older than Exeter. It was the headquarters of King Charles and his army, on two occasions in 1644; and the headquarters of Fairfax's army in October 1645. It was almost entirely destroyed by fire in 1665; and it is now a poor place, consisting chiefly of one street. It sent members to parliament from the time of Edward II. till that of Henry VII.; and was long a market-town.
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- "It has a post office under Collumpton; and fairs are held at it on the first Wednesday of April and the third Wednesday of Sept. The town hall was built in the time of Henry VI., and repaired in 1858. An old jail, with capacity for two male and two female prisoners, was restored in 1835, and is still in use. The parish church is later perpendicular English; was recently restored; and contains a fine screen of 1528, and an old painting of the crucifixion. There are Baptist and Wesleyan chapels, and charities £70.
- "The parish includes also the hamlet of Hele. Acres: 4,351. Real property: £9,762. Population: 1,796. Houses: 388. The property is much subdivided. The manor belongs to the Duchy of Cornwall. Bradninch House is an interesting old mansion, formerly the seat of the Sainthill family, now the seat of G. Pearse, Esq. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Exeter. Value: £185. Patrons: the Dean and Canons of Windsor.
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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