Place:Monkleigh, Devon, England

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia Monkleigh (#11 on map) is a village, parish and former manor in the northern part of Devon, England, situated 2-1/2 miles northwest of Great Torrington and 3-1/2 miles southeast of Bideford. From 1894 until 1974 Monkleigh was in the Bideford Rural District and since 1974 local administration is dealt with by the Torridge District. An electoral ward exists within the Torridge District titled "Monkleigh and Littleham". The population at the 2011 census was 1,488. [edit] Description The following description from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72 is provided by the website A Vision of Britain Through Time (University of Portsmouth Department of Geography). "MONKLEIGH, a village and a parish in Bideford [registration] district, Devon. The village stands on high ground, above the river Torridge, 3 miles NW by W of Torrington, and 4¼ S by E of Bideford [railway] station; belonged to Montacute monastery; and took thence the name of Monkleigh, by corruption of Monk-Leasne. "The parish comprises 2,177 acres. Post town: Torrington, North Devon. Real property: £2,369. Population: 627. Houses: 125. "The property is divided among four. The manor passed by purchase, after the Reformation, to the Coffins. Annery House, a fine mansion overlooking the picturesque village of Wear-Gifford, belonged formerly to Chief-Justice Sir W. Hankford, and belongs now to Mrs. Tardrew. Petticombe is the seat of J. S. Willett, Esq. There is a large earthenware manufactory. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Exeter. Value, £150.* Patron, J. S. Willett, Esq. The church is ancient, in fair condition; has a S aisle belonging to the Annery estate, and rebuilt in 1829; and contains a screen, two brasses, a monument to Sir W. Hankford, and a tablet to Major A. S. Willett who served and died in the Crimea. There a re a Wesleyan chapel, and a national school."

History

Monkleigh Priory

William, Count of Mortain, the founder of the Montacute Priory, gave the Monkleigh manor to the priory during the reign of Henry I (1100–1135). It was owned by the Montacute Priory in Somerset until the Dissolution of the Monasteries (between 1536 and 1541).

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Monkleigh Priory.

When the monasteries were dissolved, the manor was granted by the crown gratis on 26 August 1540 to James and Anne Coffyn (also Coffin) of Alwington for the term of her life. (Anne had been the widow of Sir George St Ledger of Annery [see below].) In June 1544, the crown granted the manor of Monkleigh to Sir John Fulford of Dunsford and Humphrey Colles of Barton, Somerset, who paid the purchase price for the manor and obtained royal licence to alienate ("royal permission, by Letters patent, to sell or dispose of a property obtained from the Crown and held by knight service") to James Coffyn. In other words, the manor was purchased for the Coffyns.

In 1810 the manor of Monkleigh was owned by Rev. John Pine-Coffin of Portledge, Alwington, from the same family as James Coffyn.[12] About 1823 Richard Pine-Coffin sold Monkleigh manor land to John Rolle, 1st Baron Rolle for the development of the Rolle Canal.

Annery, historic estate

The former historic estate of Annery was a neo-Classical mansion house that stood in a "fine timbered park" dating back to the 13th century or before. An early owner was Osbert of Annery. By 1260 the house was owned by the Stapeldons; Walter de Stapeldon was born in the Annery that year and later became the Bishop of Exeter from 1307 to 1326 and Edward II's Lord High Treasurer. After the Stapeldons, it was owned by Sir William Hankford. The Annery fell into decay and in 1800 a new building was built on the grounds of the medieval building. It was demolished in 1957.

The ruins of the lime Annery kiln, built about 1823–1824 for Lord Rolle, are located along the River Torridge. For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Annery, Monkleigh.

Registration Districts

• Bideford Registration District (1837-1998)
• Torridge Registration District (1998-2007)
• Devon Registration District (2007- )

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.)