Place:Georgeham, Devon, England

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia Georgeham (#15 on map) is a village and civil parish in the North Devon District. Between 1894 and 1974 it was in the Barnstaple Rural District. The parish contains the village of Croyde [redirected here, see note below]. The appropriate electoral ward in North Devon is termed Georgeham and Mortehoe (#26) with total population at the 2011 census of 3,748. The village of Georgeham is historic and lies close to some of the most dramatic beaches of the North Devon Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty which are flanked by the rocky headlands of Baggy Point and Saunton Down, although there are no views of the sea or coastline from the village itself. The character of the village is typically rural and is characterized by thatched cottages arranged in an irregular fashion along narrow lanes. The majority of the historic development in the village can be located to the east and southwest of the church. The village's current name, which first appeared in 1535, followed the dedication of the parish church to Saint George. Pronunciation is a controversial issue. Traditionalists maintain that there is in fact an emphasis on both the syllables George and ham. Others, usually outsiders who do not originally come from North Devon, believe there to be no pronunciation on the ham, thus making it sound George-um. The hamlets of Cross, and Forda [redirected here] lie between Georgeham and Croyde. After serving in the First World War, Henry Williamson lived in the village from 1921 in Skirr Cottage where he wrote his first published work The Beautiful Years as well as his most celebrated work Tarka the Otter. His grave lies in the village churchyard.

Croyde

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Croyde is a village on the west-facing coastline of North Devon. The village lies near Baggy Point, which is owned by the National Trust. It is part of the North Devon Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Croyde village and its beach face the Atlantic Ocean near the western limit of the Bristol Channel.

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.)