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- the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia
North Bovey (#23 on map) is a village and civil parish situated on the southeastern side of Dartmoor National Park in Devon, England, about 11 miles WSW of the city of Exeter and 1.5 miles SSW of Moreton Hampstead. The village lies above the eastern bank of the River Bovey from which it takes its name. In the UK census of 2001 the population of the parish was 274, compared to 418 in 1901 and 519 in 1801.
The parish church is built of granite and is dedicated to St. John the Baptist. It dates from the 14th century, and was restored early in the 20th century by Sir Charles Nicholson.
The parish encompasses part of the eastern side of Dartmoor, an area rich in Bronze Age remains such as Grimspound, right on its boundary and redirected to Manaton parish. The medieval Bennett's Cross, on the road between Moreton Hampstead and Two Bridges is one of the markers of the parish boundary, and the Birch Tor and Vitifer tin mining area is nearby. In the north of the parish, the small settlements of Beeson and Shapley were mentioned in the Domesday Book. There are several preserved Dartmoor longhouses in the parish, notably at Lettaford and Westcombe.
Also within the parish is Bovey Castle, designed by Detmar Blow and built in 1905–7 for Viscount Hambledon, son of W. H. Smith (1825–1891), the newsagent (and the third W. H. Smith in the family line). It is now a grade II* listed building and a hotel.
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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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