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- the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia
Newton St Petrock (#12 on map) is an ecclesiastical and civil parish in the Torridge District of Devon, England, occupying approximately 1,500 acres (6.1 km2). From 1894 until 1974 Newton St. Petrock was in the Bideford Rural District and since 1974 local administration is dealt with by the Torridge District.
The parish’s famous landmark is an ancient oak. Its profile is, appropriately, that of an acorn whose western border follows the River Torridge. The parish is contiguous with the parishes of Abbots Bickington, Bulkworthy, Shebbear and Milton Damerel.
King Athelstan, in the 10th century, granted the lands of "Niwantun" to the priests of St Petroc's minster at Bodmin. The boundaries of St Petroc’s Niwantun remain exactly the same today except for some expansion to the ecclesiastical and civil parish on its north side to include part of what was called Cleave in the Middle Ages and what was once part of the parish of Frithelstock in the 19th century. The population of this rural parish has remained remarkably stable over the last two centuries. In 1801, the population was 201 and this had fallen to 163 by 2001. In the late 17th century Newton St. Petrock was the home of England’s first female physician, Prudence Abbott Potter. A 19th-century rector, John Lemprière, wrote a Classical Dictionary used for generations in schools throughout the English-speaking world.
A Baptist church was opened at Newton St. Petrock on 19 January 1830 on the property of Mr Frank Thorne, the local blacksmith, who might be considered the first pastor although the cause began twelve years earlier when the Rev. John Gould retired from the chapel at Croyde in the neighbouring parish of Georgeham and settled in Newton St. Petrock.
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The Land Tax Assessment for 1832 has the following Occupiers and their Properties:
- John King: Lane, Dingle Park, and Francesmeadow ;
- Richard Beare: East Hole, and North Hawkwill;
- William Blight: Ven;
- John Ball: Jeans Westhole, Bridgements Westhole, Rogerments Westhole, and Barness;
- William Cobbledick: Newton Mill Tenement;
- William White: Newton Mills;
- John Cobbledick: Holwill;
- John Osborn: South Hawkwill;
- William Sanders: Higher Slew, Lower Slew; Chapple, and Ford;
- Richard Quance: Higher Coham, and Lower Coham;
- John Brent: Down; Samuel Fishleigh: Bridge;
- John Thorne: Higher Westhole;
- Thomas Rees: Stone Park;
- John Western: Suddon; and
- Edmund Palmer: Bridge Ham.
Like most North Devon parishes many of Newton St. Petrock's sons and daughters emigrated to Canada and elsewhere in the second half of the 19th century.
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.)
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