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- the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia
Churston Ferrers (#4 on map) is an historic civil parish, former manor and ecclesiastical or ancient parish in Devon, England, situated between the south coast towns of Paignton and Brixham. Today it is administered by local government as the "Churston with Galmpton" ward of the Torbay unitary authority. It contains the coastal village of Churston, the now larger village of Galmpton and the Broadsands area. The ward has a 21st century resident population of about 6,657. (Galmpton has its own article in Wikipedia.)
Churston railway station is on the Paignton and Dartmouth Steam Railway from which steam trains run daily. Churston Court, the former manor house of Churston Ferrers and today a hotel, is a Grade II* listed building situated to the immediate west of the parish church. Within the parish, off the Brixham Road, is situated Lupton House, a Palladian country house. Both houses were seats of the Yarde-Buller family, created Baron Churston in 1858.
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Churston Ferrers was originally a chapelry in the ecclesiastical parish of Brixham and from 1894 until 1974 it was part of the Totnes Rural District. It ceased to be a civil parish in 1967 when it was merged into Kingswear, but with later boundary changes Churston Ferrers is now part of Torbay while Kingswear is in the South Hams District.
A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Churston Ferrers from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1871-72:
- "CHURSTON-FERRERS, a village and a parish in Totnes [registration] district, Devon. The village stands on the coast, near the Torquay and Dartmouth railway, 5 miles S of Torquay; has a railway station; and gives the title of Baron to the family of Yarde Buller. The parish includes also the hamlet of Galmpton; and its post town is Brixham, South Devon. Acres: 2,777; of which 250 are water. Real property: £3,498. Population: 766. Houses: 145. The property is divided among a few. The manor belonged anciently to the Ferrers; passed to the Yardes and the Bullers; and belongs now to Lord Churston of Churston-Ferrers, who was raised to the peerage in 1858. Churston Court is the seat of Lord Churston; and Galmpton House is the seat of the Luttrells. The living is a vicarage, annexed to the vicarage of Brixham, in the diocese of Exeter. The church is an ancient edifice, with a low tower. There is a small Independent chapel at Galmpton. Charities, £6."
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.)
- South Hams, Devon, A Genealogical Information Resource A collection of transcriptions of church registers and the 1841 census, plus a free lookup service in registers and other materials that have not been transcribed, for the South Hams District of Devon, England. The website states that its latest transcription was added 10 Nov 2018.
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