Place:Broadhembury, Devon, England

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia Broadhembury (#5 on map) is a village and civil parish in the East Devon District of Devon, England, about 5 miles northwest of Honiton. The civil parish includes the hamlets of Kerswell, Dulford, Crammer Barton, Colliton and Luton, all to the west of the main village. According to the 2001 UK census the civil parish had a population of 654. Within East Devon District Broadhembury is part of the electoral ward of "Tale Vale". The total population of this ward at the 2011 Census was 2,514. It is within the Blackdown Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Broadhembury is set in the centre of a horseshoe of the hills of Hembury Fort and North Hill, which rise to 1000 feet and create a sheltered valley. Hembury Fort, a prehistoric hill fort dating from 3000 BC, was also used by the Romans. After their departure, this area of Devon was sparsely occupied by the Celtic people. In those years Hembury Fort was called Handria. With the arrival of the Saxons, little wattle churches were built and the villagers lived in little cells or wooden huts. The Saxons brought the plough and cultivated the holdings. At the time of the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the population density of Broadhembury was 9 per square mile. During the Black Death of 1364, the population was affected, and two priests died of it.

Henry VIII presented the land at Broadhembury to his faithful courtier, Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, who sold it to Sir Thomas Drewe, son of Edward Drewe. Edward Drewe was responsible for the building of the manor house adjoining a small farm house at The Grange in about 1603. Edward was a sergeant at arms to Queen Elizabeth.

Broadhembury has changed very little in outward appearance during the last century, with many of the thatch and cob cottages standing since the 16th century.

Augustus Toplady, hymnwriter, was vicar of Broadhembury from 1768 to 1778.

F. W. Boreham, the writer and pastor, wrote in 1926 in his book A Faggot of Torches (p. 23), "If, on the face of God’s earth, there is anywhere a more peaceful and picturesque place than Broadhembury, I should dearly love to be taken to it."

Julius Drewe purchased the inn, and half the village, at the turn of the 20th century. Broadhembury House, the large thatched residence on the north side of the church, was converted by him from an old cottage. The garden is of particular beauty,

The descendants of Julius Drewe of Castle Drogo, Drewsteignton, still live in the village in Broadhembury House.

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.

• the Devon Heritage Centre at Exeter
• the Northern Record Office at Barnstaple
• the Plymouth and West Devon Record Office at Plymouth which is independent of the other two.

• 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.

• The FamilySearch Wiki provides a similar information service to GENUKI. An index of parishes leads to notes and references for each parish.

• Brett Langston's list of Devon Registration Districts and parishes within each registration district from 1837 to the present can indicate where to find details of civil registration entries since the process began in England.

• 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.)