Place:Sidmouth, Devon, England

History

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The origins of Sidmouth pre-date recorded history. The Sid valley has been in human occupation since at least the Iron Age as attested by the presence of Sidbury Castle, and possibly earlier given the presence of Bronze Age burial mounds on Gittisham Hill and Broad Down. The village of Sidbury itself is known to be Saxon in origin with the Church crypt dating to the seventh century. However, the Sid Valley was divided into two ecclesiastical land holdings, with Sidbury and Salcombe Regis being gifted by King Athelstan to Exeter Cathedral, and Sidmouth, which was part of the manor of Otterton, was gifted by Gytha Thorkelsdóttir (the mother of King Harold Godwinson) to the Benedictines at Mont-Saint-Michel.

Sidmouth appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Sedemuda, meaning "mouth of the Sid". Like many such settlements, it was originally a fishing village.

By the 1200s, Sidmouth had expanded to become a market town of similar size to Sidbury and generating more income for the abbot of Mont-Saint-Michel than Otterton. By this time, Sidmouth already had a parish church, as the Otterton Cartulary refers to a grant of 30 acres of land to Guilielmas, the vicar in Sidmouth, as a glebe, and excavations in 2009 during the remodelling of the parish church revealed foundations dating from that time. It is likely that the church was already dedicated to St Giles, as the annual fair was held on his feast day 1 September.^[1] According to one of the many blue plaques found around Sidmouth, not far from the church was a chapel dedicated to St Peter built sometime before 1322, the remaining wall of which is now part of Dukes Hotel.

During the 14th century, Sidmouth enjoyed a degree of prosperity from the wine trade and, as part of the manor of Otterton, was transferred by King Henry V from Mont-Saint-Michel to Syon Abbey. King Henry VIII confiscated it again during the dissolution of the monasteries and sold it off, whereafter it changed hands several times before being acquired by the Mainwaring baronets, whose family provided two of the vicars of Sidmouth parish.^[1]

Although attempts have been made to construct a harbour, none has succeeded. A lack of shelter in the bay prevented the town's growth as a port. Despite this, a part of the town is known as 'Port Royal' which is likely due to the town's having provided two ships and 67 men to King Edward III during the Hundred Years' War with which to attack Calais. The most concerted effort was a short-lived attempt in the 1830s at the west of the seafront; this included the construction of the Sidmouth Harbour Railway along the seafront and into a tunnel at the cliffs to the east that would have transported stone from Hook Ebb. Only a few traces of the railway and tunnel survive today.

According to one of the Sid Vale Association Blue Plaques, a fort was built in Sidmouth in 1628, due to fear of a French invasion or naval attack, on the part of the seafront that is known as 'Fortfield' and which is now the cricket pitch.

Another of the Blue Plaques of the Sid Vale Association, confirms that the Old Ship pub (now a Costa Coffee) had operated as a tavern in Sidmouth since the 1400s and was used by smugglers.^[2] The infamous Jack Rattenbury, who was born nearby in Beer, Devon operated in the area, and was known to associate with the Mutter family of Ladram Bay (after whom Mutter's Moor on Peak Hill overlooking Sidmouth is named).^[3]

Sidmouth remained a village until the fashion for coastal resorts grew in the Georgian and Victorian periods of the 18th and 19th centuries. A number of Georgian and Regency buildings still remain. In 1819, George III's son Edward, Duke of Kent, his wife, and baby daughter (the future Queen Victoria) came to stay at Woolbrook Glen for a few weeks. In less than a month he had died from an illness. The house later became the Royal Glen Hotel; a plaque on an exterior wall records the visit. Sidmouth was connected to the railway network in 1874, by a branch line from Sidmouth Junction, which from there called at Ottery St Mary and Tipton St John. This was dismantled in 1967 as a result of the Beeching Axe.

In 2008, Canadian millionaire Keith Owen, who had been on holiday in the town and planned to retire there, bequeathed about £2.3 million to the community's civic society, the Sid Vale Association, upon learning that he had only weeks to live due to lung cancer. The bequest was used as a capital fund to generate an annual interest dividend of around £120,000 for community projects.