Place:South Molton, Devon, England

Watchers
NameSouth Molton
Alt namesSudmoltonesource: Domesday Book (1985) p 86
Sut Moltonasource: Domesday Book (1985) p 86
North Allersource: settlement in parish
South Allersource: settlement in parish
South Braysource: settlement in parish
TypeAncient parish, Civil parish, Borough (municipal)
Coordinates51.017°N 3.833°W
Located inDevon, England
See alsoSouth Molton Hundred, Devon, Englandhundred in which the borough was located
South Molton Rural, Devon, Englandrural district in which the parish was located 1967-1974
North Devon District, Devon, Englandmodern district into which the borough was transferred in 1974

South Molton (#25 on map) is a small town in Devon, England. It is part of the North Devon District (local government municipality). The town is on the River Mole. According to the 2001 UK census the civil parish of South Molton had a population of 4,093, increasing to 5,108 at the 2011 UK census 2011. The population of the electoral ward representing South Molton in 2011 was 4,875. It would appear that the ward's boundaries were smaller than those of the original civil parish.

The town became a municipal borough under the Municipal Reform Act 1835. It retained this status until 1967 when it became a rural borough in the South Molton Rural District.

During the English Civil War, on 14 March 1655, Sir John Penruddock was captured after a three-hour street fight in South Molton by soldiers of Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army under the command of Captain Unton Crook. With his capture, the Penruddock uprising came to an end and so did the 1655 plans of the Sealed Knot to restore King Charles II to the throne of England.

South Molton is a well-built market town trading mostly in sheep and cattle. South Molton had a railway station on the Devon Railway until 1966, when the branch line was finally closed. The station was described in detail in the best selling railway publication the Country Railway. It is situated on the southern side of Exmoor just off the North Devon link road, which in part follows the route of the railway line.

Image:South Moulton RD small.png

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 South Molton. 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.