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| NOTE: Charles is also the name of one of the ecclesiastical parishes of the City of Plymouth. They should not be confused.
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The following description of the parish of Charles (#3 on the map) 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).
- "CHARLES, a village and a parish in South Molton [registration] district, Devon. The village stands on the river Bray, 5 miles NNW of South Molton, and 9 E of Barnstaple [railway] station. The parish includes also the hamlet of Brayford. Post Town: South Molton, North Devon. Acres: 2,429. Real property: £2,527. Population: 356. Houses: 75.
- "The property is subdivided. The manor belongs to Sir T. D. Acland, Bart. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Exeter. Value: £390. Patron: the Rev. R. Blackmore. The church is perpendicular English, with a tower."
- the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia
Before 1974 Charles was a civil parish with an area of 2,400 acres in the South Molton Rural District. Since the rural district was replaced by the North Devon District in 1974 the parish boundaries have been changed. Charles (#3 on map) is now a hamlet in the civil parish of East and West Buckland while the former hamlet of Brayford (see below) has become a civil parish.
For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article North Devon. Has a more modern map opposite the section "Governance" somewhat down the page which can can be expanded for legibility.
The nearest town is South Molton, which lies approximately 4.7 miles (7.6 km) southeast from the village or hamlet of Charles, just off the A399 road.
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Brayford
- the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia
Brayford is a village and civil parish in Devon, England, situated about 5 miles (8.0 km) from South Molton and 6 miles (9.7 km) from Barnstaple. It lies on Exmoor and sits beneath open areas of common land. It is a small rural community and in the surrounding area are many farms.
Brayford is around 1 mile from the "hamlet of Charles" and is also host to several quarries. The village can be found along the Ilfracombe - South Molton Road in North Devon, and is also near to the North Devon Link Road which connects the area with the M5 motorway.
The large Brayford Quarry lies on the outskirts of the village. It is operated by Hansons but remains an asset of Archibald Nott & Sons.
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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