Place:Burlescombe, Devon, England

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia Burlescombe (#4 on map) is a village and civil parish in the Mid Devon District of Devon, England. According to the 2001 UK census it had a population of 911. The village is about 5 miles (8.0 km) southwest of Wellington in Somerset. The ruins of the 12th century Canonsleigh Abbey are nearby. From 1894 Burlescombe was in the Culmstock Rural District until 1935 when the rural district was abolished. It was transferred to the Tiverton Rural District until 1974 when it became part of the present Mid Devon District. [edit] History The parish was formerly divided into four tithings and hamlets: the Town Tithing, Appledore (near Tiverton), Westleigh (Burlescombe) and Ayshford. In 1872 the lord of the manor was Edward Ayshford Sandford, Esq., but much of the parish belonged to the heirs of Sir William Follett, namely R. H. Clarke Esq., Henry Dunsford Esq., and other freeholders. (Source: John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72)

As part of the construction of the Grand Western Canal in about 1810, several bridges and culverts were constructed at Burlescombe. Limestone of superior quality abounded in the locality and in the 19th century great quantities of it were sent off by canal and railway.

Burlescombe railway station was opened by the Bristol and Exeter Railway in 1867. A siding on the west side served the railway's nearby ballast quarry at Westleigh. Both the station and siding are now closed. The parish includes Tiverton Parkway railway station, which was opened in 1986.

In 1872 the parish was entitled to send a boy to nearby Uffculme Free School, founded in 1701 by Nicholas Ayshford who endowed it with £47 per annum. The charity is still in existence today.

The parish church

The parish church dedicated to St Mary is chiefly of the time of Henry VII (1485–1509) and was renovated in 1843. It contains a beautiful ancient rood-screen, and fine monuments of the Ayshford family. The parish church was renovated in 1843 when new carved oak pews and stained glass windows were added and the heraldic blazonry on the screen was re-painted.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Burlescombe. Including descriptions of the monuments to the Ayshford family and short biographies.

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.)