Place:Kingsbridge, Devon, England

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia Kingsbridge is a market town and tourist hub in the South Hams District of Devon, England, with a population of 6,116 at the UK census of 2011. There are two electoral wards: East Kingsbridge and North Kingsbridge. Their combined population at the above census was 4,381. The town is situated at the northern end of the Kingsbridge Estuary, a ria that extends to the sea six miles south of the town. It is the third largest settlement in the South Hams. Kingsbridge is in fact a combination of two towns, Kingsbridge and Dodbrooke (redirected here) which together formed an urban district from 1894 until 1974. Dodbrooke was granted its own market in 1257 and had become a borough by 1319. While Dodbrooke was originally considered to be the dominant of the two, Kingsbridge later expanded to include it. The town consists of two ecclesiastical parishes: St. Edmund's in the west and St. Thomas Becket at Dodbrooke in the east.

History

this is a condensation of a section of the article in Wikipedia

The town formed around a bridge which was built in or before the 10th century between the royal estates of Alvington, to the west, and Chillington, a village in Stokenham parish, to the east, hence giving it the name of Kyngysbrygge ("King's bridge"). In 1219 the Abbot of Buckfast was granted the right to hold a market there, and by 1238 the settlement had become a borough. The manor remained in possession of the abbot until the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when it was granted to Sir William Petre. Kingsbridge was never represented in Parliament or incorporated by charter, the local government being by a portreeve. It lay within the hundred of Stanborough.

In 1798 the town mills were converted into a woollen manufactory, which produced large quantities of cloth, and serge manufacture was introduced early in the 19th century. During the 19th century the town had an active coastal shipping trade, shipbuilding, a tannery, other industries and a large monthly cattle market. The chief exports were cider, corn, malt, and slate.

St. Edmund's Church, in mainly Perpendicular style, retains some 13th-century features including a font, but was enlarged and reconsecrated around 1414 and was mostly rebuilt in the 19th century. The parish church of St. Thomas Becket displays a particularly well-preserved rood screen restored in 1897.

Dodbrooke

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Dodbrooke has been the eastern part of the town and urban district of Kingsbridge since 1893. (The civil parish has been called Kingsbridge and Dodbrooke since that time.) It is located at the top of the Dartmouth Estuary.

The town consists of two ecclesiastical parishes: St. Edmund's in the west and St. Thomas Becket at Dodbrooke in the east. The parish church of St. Thomas Becket displays a particularly well-preserved rood screen, restored in 1897.

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Dodbrooke from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1871-72:

"DODBROOKE, a small town and a parish in Kings-bridge [registration] district, Devon. The town forms the eastern part of Kingsbridge town; is more ancient than Kingsbridge; belonged to the widow of Edward the Confessor; contains Pindar-Lodge, the birth-place of Dr. Wolcott, better known as Peter Pindar; was the first place in which white ale was brewed; shares generally in the trade of Kingsbridge; and has a fair of its own on the Wednesday before Palm Sunday. The parish comprises 464 acres; of which 105 are water. Post town: Kingsbridge. Real property, with Kingsbridge and Churstow: £12,586. Rated property of [Dodbrooke] alone: £1,482. Population: 1,183. Houses: 238. The property is much subdivided. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Exeter. Value: £183. Patron: Rev. J. Dewing. The church is very old, but was not long ago repaired. Charities, £15."

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.)
• 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.