Place:Chardstock, Devon, England

Watchers
NameChardstock
Alt namesCerdestochesource: Domesday Book (1985) p 78
Chardstock-All Saintssource: hamlet in parish
Bewley Downsource: hamlet in parish
Birchillsource: hamlet in parish
Burridgesource: hamlet in parish
Tytherleighsource: hamlet in parish
TypeAncient parish, Civil parish
Coordinates50.833°N 2.983°W
Located inDevon, England     (1896 - )
Also located inDorset, England     ( - 1896)
See alsoBeaminster Hundred, Dorset, Englandhundred of which it was a part
Axminster Rural, Devon, Englandrural district in which the parish was located 1894-1974
East Devon District, Devon, Englandcovering the area since 1974
the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Chardstock (#6 on map) is a village and civil parish now located on the eastern border of Devon, England, but, until 1896, was considered to be in the county of Dorset. It is situated off the A358 road between Axminster and Chard, Somerset. The parish population at the 2011 UK Census was 828 including the hamlets of Bewley Down, Birchill, Burridge, and Tytherleigh.

The parish is a major part of the modern electoral ward of "Yarty" within the East Devon District. The ward population at the 2011 census was 2,361.

UK Genealogy Archives provide the following transcription from The Comprehensive Gazetteer of England and Wales, 1894-5

"Chardstock, a village and a parish in Dorsetshire. The village stands on the river Kit, a tributary of the Axe, near the Yeovil and Exeter railway, between the Chard Road and Axminster stations, 3 miles SSW of Chard, under which it has a post office. Acreage, 5362; population, 1075. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Salisbury; gross value, £346 with residence. Patron, the Bishop of Salisbury. The church was rebuilt and enlarged in 1864."

UK Genealogy Archives also states that the parish was transferred from Dorset to Devon, England in 1896. This is confirmed by A Vision of Britain through Time which states that it was in Axminster Rural District in Devon, having previously been in Beaminster Hundred in Dorset.

Chardstock All-Saints was a chapelry and hamlet within the parish.

Image:Axminster RD small.png

Registration Districts

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.)