Place:Tiverton, Devon, England

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Tiverton is a town in the English county of Devon. Since 1974 it has been the major town and the administrative centre of the Mid Devon District, with a population of 38,300 (as estimated by Devon County Council in 2013). Prior to the existence of the Mid Devon District, Tiverton was a municipal borough which was surrounded by Tiverton Rural District.

The industrialist John Heathcoat bought an old woollen mill on the river Exe in 1815, and after the destruction of his machinery at Loughborough by former Luddites thought to be in the pay of Nottingham lacemakers, he moved his whole lace-making operation to Tiverton. The factory turned the fortunes of Tiverton again, making it an early industrial centre in the South West. Lace-making continued at Heathcoat's factory until well into the 20th century. Trade was aided when a branch of the Grand Western Canal from Tiverton to Lowdwells was opened in 1814, with an extension to Taunton in 1838. This was followed by a branch of the Great Western Railway in 1848. Tiverton Town Hall, elaborately designed by Henry Lloyd, was completed in 1864. For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Tiverton, Devon.

The following description from John Bartholomew's Gazetteer of the British Isles (1887) is provided by the website A Vision of Britain Through Time (University of Portsmouth Department of Geography).

"Tiverton.-- [municipal borough], market town, and [parish], Devon, 12 miles N. of Exeter and 184 miles from London by rail, 17,491 ac., population 10,462; [Post Office], [Telegraph Office], 3 Banks, 3 newspapers. Market-days, Tuesday and Saturday. The town is situated on the slope of a hill above the confluence of the Exe and the Lowman, hence its name, "Twyfordton" - the town by the two fords. A handsome stone bridge leads to the large suburb of West Exe. Tiverton has existed from the Saxon times through many vicissitudes, and is now a well-built and flourishing town. Its chief architectural features are the parish church of St Peter, the town hall, and the free grammar school. The woollen trade has declined since the 17th century, and the chief industry now is lace-making. A canal connects the locality with the river Tone. Tiverton returned 2 members to Parliament from the time of James I. until 1885.

Registration Districts

• Tiverton Registration District (1837-1978)
• Mid Devon Registration District (1978-2007)
• Devon Registration District (2007- )

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.

• the Devon Heritage Centre at Exeter
• the Northern Record Office at Barnstaple
• the Plymouth and West Devon Record Office at Plymouth which is independent of the other two.

• 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.

• The FamilySearch Wiki provides a similar information service to GENUKI. An index of parishes leads to notes and references for each parish.

• Brett Langston's list of Devon Registration Districts and parishes within each registration district from 1837 to the present can indicate where to find details of civil registration entries since the process began in England.

• 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.)