Place:Lapford, Devon, England

Watchers
NameLapford
Alt namesEslapafordasource: Domesday Book (1985) p 83
Slapefordsource: Domesday Book (1985) p 83
Slapefordasource: Domesday Book (1985) p 83
TypeAncient parish, Civil parish
Coordinates50.867°N 3.783°W
Located inDevon, England
See alsoNorth Tawton and Winkleigh Hundred, Devon, Englandhundred in which the parish was situated
Crediton Rural, Devon, Englandrural district in which the parish was located 1894-1974
Mid Devon District, Devon, Englanddistrict municipality covering the area since 1974
the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Lapford (#14 on map) is a village and civil parish in the Mid Devon District in the English county of Devon. It has a population of 993, reducing to 867 at the 2011 census.

From 1894 until 1974 Lapford was in the Crediton Rural District and since 1974 in the Mid Devon District.

The following section is quoted directly from Wikipedia

Local legends

The village is said to be haunted by the spirit of the former Vicar of Lapford's church, the St Thomas of Canterbury Church, John Radford. He murdered his curate, in the 1860s, but was spared from the gallows by a jury consisting of many of his village parishioners and returned to his parish duties. His dying wish was to be buried in the church chancel, he made the ominous threat to haunt the village if his wishes were not carried out. The church authorities would not allow this, instead he was buried outside the vestry door where his grave can still be seen today. His spirit is said to still wander around the village.

Lapford is also said to be haunted by the spirit of the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Beckett. On the anniversary of his murder he is said to gallop through the village on horseback on his way to confront Sir William de Tracey, of nearby Nymet Tracy, for his part in the brutal murder.

Registration Districts

Image:Crediton RD small.png

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.
  • 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.
  • 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.)
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Lapford. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.