Place:East Budleigh, Devon, England

Watchers
NameEast Budleigh
Alt namesBodeleiasource: Domesday Book (1985) p 80
Bodeliesource: Domesday Book (1985) p 80
Hayes Bartonsource: hamlet in parish
TypeAncient parish, Civil parish
Coordinates50.65°N 3.317°W
Located inDevon, England
See alsoEast Budleigh Hundred, Devon, Englandhundred of which the parish was a part
Honiton Rural, Devon, Englandrural district 1894-1974
East Devon District, Devon, Englanddistrict municipality covering the area since 1974
the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

East Budleigh (#14 on map) is a small village in the East Devon District of Devon, England. The parishes of Bicton (#3), Colaton Raleigh (#10), and Otterton (#25) lie (respectively) to the west, north and east of East Budleigh, with the seaside town of Budleigh Salterton about two miles south and the larger town of Exmouth to the southwest. The population in the 2011 UK census was 782.

Until the River Otter to the east silted up, the village was a market town and port; it was still being used by ships in the 15th century, according to John Leland.

Sir Walter Raleigh was born in the hamlet of Hayes Barton on the northern boundary of the parish circa 1552, and his parents are buried in All Saints churchyard in the village. The 14th-century church contains attractive pew ends including one bearing the Raleigh coat of arms.

Governor Roger Conant, founder of Salem, Massachusetts and the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was born in East Budleigh in 1592 to Richard Conant.

Image:Honiton 2 small.png

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.
  • 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.
  • 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.)