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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).
- "POWDERHAM, a parish in St. Thomas [registration] district, Devon; on the estuary of the river Exe, and on the South Devon railway, 2 miles N by W of Starcross [railway] station, and 6½ S S E of Exeter. Post-town: Kenton, Devon. Acres: 1,947; of which 495 are water. Real property: £2,253. Population: 238. Houses: 51.
- "The manor was held, at the Norman conquest, by William de Ou; passed to John of Powderham, the Bohuns, and the Courtenays; and belongs now to the Earl of Devon. [Powderham] Castle stands on an acclivity rising from the Exe; is said to have been founded before the Norman conquest. [It] formed, in the time of Leland, a strong fort, with a barbican, for the protection of the Exe haven; was garrisoned, and taken and retaken, by both contending parties in the civil wars of Charles I.; is now a seat of the Earl of Devon, recently much improved. The park around it is beautifully wooded, and well stocked with deer. A triangular tower, called the Belvidere, crowns the highest ground, and commands magnificent and extensive views.
- "The living is a rectory in the diocese of Exeter. Value: £351, with 91 acres of glebe. Patron: the Earl of Devon. The church is later English; consists of nave, aisles, and chancel, in triple form or in equal projection, with a [west] tower; and contains a fine carved oak screen, and two monuments of the Earl of Devon's family. There is a national school.
Usually the Wikipedia article describes the parish, but in this case it devotes the whole article to Powderham Castle. This description is followed by a complete "descent of the manor" following the line of the Courtenays from 1340 to the present day.
- the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia
Powderham (#24 on map) is a former manor on the coast of south Devon, England, situated within the historic hundred of Exminster, about 6 miles (9.7 km) south of the city of Exeter and adjacent to the northeast of the village of Kenton. It consists in part of flat, formerly marshy ground on the west bank of the River Exe estuary where it is joined by its tributary the River Kenn, the site of Powderham Castle, originally the fortified manor house of Powderham. On the opposite side of the Exe is the small village of Lympstone and almost opposite is Nutwell Court in the parish of Woodbury, formerly the castle or fortified manor house of the powerful mediaeval Dynham family.
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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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