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From 1894 until 1974 Iddesleigh (#15 on map) was a civil parish in the Okehampton Rural District and since 1974 local administration is dealt with by the West Devon District.
- the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia
Iddesleigh has ancient origins and is listed in the Domesday Book. The village lies on the B3217 road, roughly central in its parish of around 2,900 acres, about eight miles north of the town of Okehampton. In the UK census of 2001, the population of the parish was 198, down from 335 in 1901, and 441 in 1801.
Iddesleigh has been described as an attractive small village, built of "cob and thatch", with good views of Dartmoor to the south. Its church is a grade I listed building and there are a number of other listed buildings in the parish.
Sir Stafford Northcote (1818-1887) owned most of the parish at one time and took the title of Earl of Iddesleigh, though he never lived here. Ash House, a grade II listed building in the south of the parish, was the seat of the Mallet family from 1530 to 1881.
There has been a settlement at Barwick, in the southeast corner of the parish, since at least the early 15th century: a document dated 1440 refers to it as "Berewyke". There are two listed buildings here. Little Barwick is a late 15th-century building with 17th-century and later alterations—its most notable feature is its medieval full cruck trusses, unusual in Devon. South Barwick Farmhouse dates from the first part of the 17th century. Barwick had a stud farm breeding shire horses before World War I. Michael Morpurgo, the author of the book War Horse on which the stage play of the same name is based, has lived in Iddesleigh since the 1970s.
The parish church, dedicated to St James, is at the western edge of the village, and is a grade I listed building. With 13th-century origins, but mostly dating from the 15th century, it has wagon roofs in its nave and north aisle. A recumbent effigy of a knight with a plain shield, lying under an arch has been dated to c. 1250 and is believed to be of a squire of Iddesleigh, a member of the locally-notable Sully family.
For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Iddesleigh.
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Registration Districts
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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.)
- Users with interests in Iddesleigh may wish to consult the references listed in Wikipedia
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