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- the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia
Widworthy (#37 on map) is a village, civil parish and former manor now in the East Devon District of Devon, England. The village is situated 3 1/2 miles east of Honiton. The parish church is dedicated to St. Cuthbert.
Near the church is "Widworthy Barton", the former manor house, which is largely unaltered from its early 17th century form. Widworthy Court is another mansion within the parish built in 1830 by Sir Edward Marwood Elton to the design of G.S. Repton.
Manors
FitzBerner
The Domesday Book of 1086 lists "Wideworde" as the 26th of the 27 Devonshire holdings of Theobald FitzBerner (Anglicised to Theobald, son of Berner, or Latinized to Tetbaldus Filius Bernerius), an Anglo-Norman warrior and magnate, one of the Devon Domesday Book tenants-in-chief of King William the Conqueror. His lands later formed part of the Feudal barony of Great Torrington in the northwester corner of the county on the border with Cornwall. His tenant was a certain Oliver, who also held from the same overlord the manors of Culm Davy and Marwood.
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Humfraville
The 13th century Book of Fees lists John de Humfraville as the tenant of the Honour of Torrington, having his own tenant at Widworthy.
de Widworthy
The earliest lord of the manor listed by the Devon historian Sir William Pole (d.1635)[9] is Sir William de Widworthy who, as was usual, had taken his surname from his seat. After a few generations the male line died out and in the reign of King Edward I (1272-1307) the manor passed via the heiress Emma de Widworthy to her husband Sir Robert Dynham.
Wotton
The manor later was inherited by the Wotton family. The last in the male line was John Wotton who married Engaret Dymock, daughter of Walyter Dymock, by whom he left a sole daughter and heiress Alis Wotton, who married Sir John Chichester (1385-1437), lord of the manor of Raleigh in the parish of Pilton, in north Devon.
Chichester
The great-grandson of Alis Wotton was John Chichester (1472-1537/8) of Raleigh, who as well as his eldest son, the heir to Raleigh, had two younger sons by his second wife Joan Brett, daughter of Robert Brett of Pilton, Devon and Whitstanton in Somerset. To the elder son by this second marriage, Amias Chichester, he gave the manor of Arlington and to the younger son John Chichester (1540-1609), he gave Widworthy.
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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