Place:Holne, Devon, England

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia Holne (#11 on map) is a village and and civil parish on the southeastern slopes of Dartmoor in Devon, England. A community has existed here since at least the 11th century, and today a population of around 250 people is served by a church and a public house. The Church of St Mary the Virgin was built circa 1300, and was enlarged early in the 16th century. Around this time a carved and painted rood screen was installed, together with a matching pulpit of unusual design. A hollow yew tree in the churchyard was thought to have been planted around 1300. Nearby is a prominent cross, with an octagonal cross section, which marks the grave of the Rev. John Gill, who was vicar of Holne from 1858 to 1917—his 90th year. The novelist and clergyman Charles Kingsley was born in the vicarage while his father was curate-in-charge here for a few months. The eastern and northern boundaries of the parish are formed by the River Dart. To the west it is bordered by the parish of Dartmoor Forest (a post-1974 formation), the boundary partly following the O Brook. It meets the northernmost point of Buckfastleigh parish at Petre's Bound Stone on Ryder's Hill, one of the highest points on southern Dartmoor. From here the boundary runs back east to the River Dart. Holne Chase Castle is a well-preserved Iron Age hill fort on the top of Holne Chase, which is an area of steep woodland in the loop of the River Dart between two medieval bridges: Holne Bridge and New Bridge.

In the north of the parish, the farmstead of Stoke was a manor in the time of the Domesday Book (1086). It was the 11th of 17 Devon holdings of William of Falaise. These later became the feudal barony of Dartington, whose lords were the FitzMartin family, feudal barons of Blagdon in Somerset. From the FitzMartins Holne descended to the Audley family, feudal barons of Barnstaple, thence to the Bourchiers, lords of the manor of Tawstock, and thence to their heirs the Wrey baronets. In 1850 Sir Bourchier Palk Wrey, 8th Baronet (1788-1879) had a hunting seat in the manor named Holne Chase House "in a singularly romantic situation". To this was attached Holne Chase, 500 acres of wood and 2200 acres of moor land extending about 2 miles into Dartmoor Forest, "amidst some of the most magnificent scenery in Devon, where the River Dart is seen foaming over its rocky bed, between steep and shelving banks, and lofty woody hills". The 8th Baronet, owned most of the parish, including the hamlets of Michelcombe and Stoke and a number of scattered farms, also the hunting boxes called Holne Park and Holne cottage.

In 1885 Sir Bourchier Toke Wrey, 10th Baronet (1829-1900) sold the estate to Hon. Richard Maitland Westenra Dawson (1845-1914), 3rd son of Richard Dawson, 1st Earl of Dartrey. The Dawsons lived in the mansion house of Holne Chase but then built a new mansion nearby called Holne Park, to which they moved. For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Holne.

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.