Place:Newton Abbot, Devon, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

:the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia Newton Abbot is a market town and an ancient borough in the English county of Devon. Since 1974 it has been part of the Teignbridge District. It is located on the River Teign, with a population of 23,580 in the UK census of 2001, increasing to 24,029 in the UK census of 2011. Newton Abbot was located in the Teignbridge Hundred and was a Registration District and Subdistrict from 1837 until 1930. The borough was made up of two parishes: Wolborough covering the area south of the River Teign, and Highweek covering the area to the north. In 1894 Newton Abbot became an urban district which included both Highweek (also known as Newton Buschell) and Wolborough. The parish of Milber was added in 1901. Newton Abbot continued as an urban district until the formation of the Teignbridge District in 1974. Since then it has been classified as a civil parish. Newton Abbot grew very rapidly in the Victorian era as it was home to the South Devon Railway locomotive works. This later became a major steam engine shed and was retained to service British Railways diesel locomotives, although it closed in 1981.

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Newton Abbot from John Bartholomew's Gazetteer of the British Isles of 1887:

"Newton Abbot, market town with ry. sta., partly in Highweek par. but chiefly in Wolborough with Newton Abbot par., Devon, at head of Teign estuary, 16 miles S. of Exeter and 214 SW. of London by rail, population: 9,826; P.O., [telegraph office], 2 Banks, 1 newspaper. Market-days, Wednesday and Saturday. Newton Abbot is a considerable town, and is the most important sta. on the South Devon line between Exeter and Plymouth. It is situated in the heart of a fertile and richly cultivated district, and presents a most picturesque appearance.

"The town consists of 2 parts - viz., Newton Abbot in Wolborough par., and Newton Bushel forming the portion in High-week par. The latter was at one time a separate town. The chief object of interest in Newton Abbot is the pedestal of the market cross, from which, in 1688, William III made his first proclamation after landing at Torbay. The chief industries of the town are brewing, iron-founding, and tanning; there is also a considerable trade in corn, timber, and potter's clay, for the loading of which large and convenient wharves have been erected."

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Newton Abbot. This covers its importance as a market in the southwest of England, particularly in wool and leather products, and also in the fishing industry.

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.)