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Teigngrace (#26 on map) is a civil parish centred on a hamlet that lies about two miles north of the town of Newton Abbot in Devon, England. According to the 2001 UK census, its population was 235, compared to 190 a century earlier. The western boundary of the parish mostly runs along the A382 road; its short northern boundary along the A38 major road; and its eastern partly along the rivers Bovey and Teign. It comes to a point at its southern extremity, near Newton Abbot Racecourse. Teingrace forms a "pocket" in the northeast corner of Newton Abbot and shares other boundaries with the parishes of Bovey Tracey (#5), Kingsteignton (#19), and a small part of Ilsington (#15).
The name Teigngrace derives from the name of the river and from Geoffrey Gras, who held the manor in 1352. Geoffrey was a kinsman of 'John called Gras', (meaning 'the fat one'), who was a canon at Torre Abbey in 1351.
The parish church, dedicated to St Peter and St Paul, has a 15th-century foundation, but was rebuilt by the Templer family (see below) out of local grey limestone in 1787 and was restored in 1872. It contains a number of 18th-century monuments. Wikipedia provides a local map.
Within the parish are several reminders of the area's industrial heritage: the Stover Canal and the Haytor Granite Tramway, both built by the Templer family, run through the parish, as does the single-track line of the Moretonhampstead and South Devon Railway, which is still occasionally used for freight. Teigngrace Halt served the village from 1876 to 1959. The parish lies at the edge of the geological formation known as the Bovey Basin and some of the extensive ball clay deposits that exist here have been mined within its boundaries.
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In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the Templer family lived on the Stover estate which had its centre in the parish, but extended northwards as far as Dartmoor. The estate was purchased in 1765 by James Templer (1722–1782), who had made his fortune erecting government buildings. He built Stover House between 1776 and 1780 out of Dartmoor granite. His son James Templer (1748–1813), built the Stover Canal and rebuilt St Peter and St Paul's Church, the parish church of Teigngrace. His son George Templer (1781–1843) built the tramway from Haytor, but encountered serious debt problems, and was forced to sell the estate to Edward St Maur, 11th Duke of Somerset in 1829. The Stover estate remained in the ownership of the Dukes of Somerset until it was sold in 1921.
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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