Place:Fremington, Devon, England

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NameFremington
Alt namesFremingtonsource: from redirect
Framintonasource: Domesday Book (1985) p 81
Framintonesource: Domesday Book (1985) p 81
Fremington Quaysource: port in the parish
Bickington in Fremingtonsource: village in parish (suburb of Barnstaple)
Yellandsource: village in parish
TypeAncient parish, Civil parish
Coordinates51.067°N 4.117°W
Located inDevon, England
See alsoFremington Hundred, Devon, Englandhundred of which the parish was a part
Barnstaple Rural, Devon, Englandrural district in which the parish was located 1894-1974
North Devon District, Devon, Englanddistrict municipality covering the area since 1974
Torridge District, Devon, England
the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Fremington (#14 on map) is a large village, civil parish and former manor in the North Devon District, the historic centre of which is situated three miles (5 km) west of Barnstaple. The village lies between the south bank of the tidal estuary of the River Taw and a small inlet of that river known as "Fremington Pill". The parish is surrounded clockwise from the north by the parishes of Heanton Punchardon, Ashford, West Pilton, Barnstaple, Tawstock, Horwood, Lovacott and Newton Tracey, and Instow.

Fremington Quay was formerly a port on the River Taw, half a mile north of the village centre. It was once significant in the import and export of many goods. It had railway sidings, cranes, and other apparatus used for the export of ball clay (mined locally) and the import of coal. Between the early to mid-twentieth century it was the busiest port (based on tonnage) between Bristol and Land's End. An abattoir was formerly located here.

Fremington was formerly a borough which sent members to Parliament in the reign of King Edward III (1327–77). The parish includes the neighbouring former hamlets (greatly expanded in the 20th century) of Bickington to the east and Yelland to the west. With the village of Fremington itself these are all on the B3223 road which runs from Barnstaple to Instow.

In the North Devon District Fremington is an electoral ward with different boundaries to that of the parish. The ward covers not much more than the village and the population at the 2011 UK census was 4,310.

Image:Barnstaple RD small.png

The large early Georgian red-brick mansion known as Fremington House, situated 50 metres east of St Peter's Church, and clearly visible from the main road, is the former manor house built by Richard II Acland (1679-1729), Member of Parliament for Barnstaple 1708-13. It was re-modelled in the 19th century by his eventual heirs the Arundell-Yeo family. The pedigrees of the families owning the manor (Acland, Barbor, Yeo, Clarke) are discussed in Wikipedia in the section "History" [far down the page]. Fremington House was also used by the US Army as "Fremington Training Camp", a hospital and rehabilitation centre during World War II and by the British Army from 1945 until 1980.

Manor of Fremington

The descent of the Manor of Fremington followed the descent of the feudal barony of Barnstaple, of which it was a member. Having reverted to King Richard II (1377–99) following the death of Nicholas Lord Audley without children, the king granted it to his half-brother John Holland, Earl of Huntingdon (c. 1352 – 1400). Following Holland's execution in January 1400 for his rebellion against King Henry IV, who had usurped the throne from King Richard, the keeping of the manor of Fremington was given in May 1400 to John Stourton (died 1438) of Preston Plucknett in Somerset, 7 times MP for Somerset. For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Manor of Fremington. This follows the ownership of the manor through later centuries.

Registration Districts

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.)
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Fremington, Devon. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.