Place:Roborough, Devon, England

Watchers
NameRoborough
Alt namesRawebergasource: Domesday Book (1985) p 85
Rawebergesource: Domesday Book (1985) p 85
Ebberlysource: hamlet in parish
Great Barlingtonsource: hamlet in parish
Middle Barlingtonsource: hamlet in parish
TypeAncient parish, Civil parish
Coordinates50.933°N 4.017°W
Located inDevon, England
See alsoFremington Hundred, Devon, Englandhundred of which the parish was a part
Torrington Rural, Devon, Englandrural district in which the parish was located 1894-1974
Torridge District, Devon, Englanddistrict municipality covering the area since 1974
NOTE: There is a second place named Roborough in Devon. It is located just within the northern boundary of Plymouth. It appears to be a 20th century settlement and is not listed in WeRelate.


the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Roborough (#16 on map) is a civil parish with a village of the same name 5.5 mi (8.9 km) from Great Torrington in the northern part of Devon, England.. Situated topographically on the plateau between the Torridge and Taw Rivers, the parish covers 1,258 ha (3,110 acres) and contains a population of some 258 parishioners. It is surrounded by a pastoral landscape of rectangular fields, high hedges and scattered farmsteads.

From 1894 until 1974 Roborough was in the Torrington Rural District and since 1974 local administration is dealt with by the Torridge District.

Ebberly is a hamlet within Roborough parish. The hamlet has several prominent white houses by the roadside, a mansion house known as Ebberly House (inhabited by the Davie or Davy family) and a Methodist chapel.

Besides Ebberly there are two other estates in Roborough: Owlacombe (listed as Olecu(m)be in the Domesday Book of 1086) and Over Wollocombe or Combe where the owners or tenants were of the Wollocombe, Stafford, and Hole families.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Roborough, Torridge.

Image:Torrington RD small.png

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Roborough from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:

"ROBOROUGH, a village and a parish in Torrington [registration] district, Devon. The village stands 4 miles W S W of Portsmouth-Arms [railway] station, and 5½ E S E of Great Torrington; was anciently called Rougaburga; and took that name from beorghs or burying-places in its neighbourhood. The parish contains also the hamlet of Ebberly; and its post town is Torrington, North Devon. Acres: 3,114. Real property: £2,426. Population: 478. Houses: 86. The property is divided among a few. The manor of [Roborough] belonged, at the Norman conquest, to the Russells; and, with Ebberly House, belongs now to Hole, Esq. The manor of Coombe belonged recently to J. Vivian, Esq.; and belongs now to the Hon. Mark Rolle. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Exeter. Value: £193. Patron: the Rev. T. May. The church is ancient. There are a Wesleyan chapel and a parochial school."

Registration Districts

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.
  • 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.
  • 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.)
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Roborough, Torridge. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.