Place:Chittlehamholt, Devon, England

:the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia Chittlehamholt (#5 on map) is a village and and civil parish in North Devon District of Devon, England. In the 2011 UK census it was recorded as having a population of 169. The neighbouring parishes are Satterleigh and Warkleigh (#24) to the north, Kings Nympton (#14) to the east, Chulmleigh (#7) to the southeast, Burrington (#2) to the south, and High Bickington in Torridge District to the west. The River Taw forms the southern and western boundary of the parish, and the A377 road from Barnstaple to Exeter skirts the parish on the far side of the river. Within the North Devon District a combined parish council serves Chittlehamholt and the neighbouring parish as the "Chittlehamholt, Satterleigh and Warkleigh Parish Council". There are 26 listed buildings in the parish, all at Grade II. They include two bridges, the church of St John Baptist, a Gospel Hall, Chittlehamholt Manor, the Exeter Inn (a 16th-century coaching inn) and some houses and farm buildings. The hamlet of Chittlehamholt was originally a clearing in woods where residents of Chittlehampton (#6) collected logs. Until 1875 it was part of Chittlehampton. The parish church of St John the Baptist is part of the South Molton Mission Community within the Diocese of Exeter.

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Chittlehamholt from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:

"CHITTLEHAM-HOLT, a chapelry in Chittlehampton parish, Devon; on the river Taw, 3½ miles SW of South Molton, and 5 E of Umberleigh [railway] station. Post town, South Molton, North Devon. Population: 317. The manor belongs to the family of Brown. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Exeter. Value: £82. Patrons, the Trustees of Lord Rolle. The church is a modern structure in the early English style, founded by the late Lord Rolle."

NOTE: For availability of parish records, etc. see The FamilySearch Wiki

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.)
• References to the relationship between the two hamlets/villages from A Vision of Britain through Time[[Category:Chittlehampton, Devon, England