Place:Haccombe with Combe, Devon, England

:the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia Haccombe with Combe (#11 on map) is a civil parish in the Teignbridge District of Devon, England. The parish lies immediately to the east of the town of Newton Abbot, and south of the estuary of the River Teign. North of the estuary are the parishes of Kingsteignton and Bishopsteignton. The parish is bordered on the east by Stokeinteignhead and on the south by Coffinswell. Most of the southern boundary of the parish follows the minor ridge road that runs between the suburbs of Milber in Newton Abbot and Barton in Torquay and it bisects the Iron Age hill fort of Milber Down. In the UK census of 2001 the population of the parish was 729, much increased from 415 in 1901. The main settlement is the village of Combeinteignhead, with its parish church and public house, the Wild Goose Inn. Another village is Netherton (Combeinteignhead), which probably has origins in a 12th-century estate. Other notable buildings are Haccombe House and its adjacent church dedicated to Saint Blaise; Buckland Barton (formerly Buckland Baron), which is now a farmhouse with wood panelling and plaster ceilings dating from around 1600, but was a manor at the time of Domesday (1086); it was the home of the Hockmore family to whom there are monuments in the church. On a small promontory in the estuary, Coombe Cellars is now a public house, but was formerly a base for the local fishing industry and a site for smuggling.

Combeinteignhead

Combeinteignhead or Combe-in-Teignhead or Combe in Teignhead is a village which since 1885 has been part of the civil parish of Haccombe with Combe. It is situated between Newton Abbot and Shaldon, about half a mile (1 km) inland from the estuary of the River Teign.

Despite this closeness to the river, the name Combeinteignhead is not derived from it: in the Domesday Book the district contained thirteen manors which totalled an area of ten hides and the whole area was known as the "Ten Hide". This was later corrupted to Teignhead through the influence of the river name. The name of the nearby village of Stokeinteignhead has a similar derivation.

The following description from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72 is provided by the website A Vision of Britain Through Time (University of Portsmouth Department of Geography).

"COMBEINTEIGNHEAD, or Combe-in-Teignhead, a village and a parish in Newton-Abbot [registration] district, Devon. The village stands in the Teign valley, about ½ a mile from the Teign river, 3 miles E of Newton Junction [railway] station, and 5 N of Torquay. The parish includes also the hamlets of Combe-Cellars, Netherton, and Rocombe; and its post town is Teignmouth. Acres: 2,407; of which 190 are water. Real property: £3,078. Population: 417. Houses: 101.

"The property is divided among a few. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Exeter. Value: £324. Patrons: J. W. Harding and W. Long, Esqs. The church is old; consists of nave, chancel, north and south aisles, with a square tower; has a carved oak screen; and was repaired in 1853."

Haccombe

The following description from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72 is provided by the website A Vision of Britain Through Time (University of Portsmouth Department of Geography).

"HACCOMBE, a parish in Newton Abbot [registration] district, Devon; near the river Teign and the South Devon railway, 3 miles E by S of Newton Abbot. Post town: Newton Abbot. Acres: 363. Population: 42. Houses: 6. The manor belonged anciently to the Haccombs; passed to the Archdeacons and the Courtenays; and has belonged, since the 13th century, to the Carews. Haccombe House, now the seat of Sir W. P. Carew, Bart., is a modern edifice, on the site of a very ancient hall. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Exeter. Value: £253. Patron: Sir W. P. Carew, Bart. The church is ancient, partly decorated English; was formerly collegiate, for an archpriest and five priests; contains interesting monuments of the Haccombs and the Carews; and has, on its door, two horse shoes, commemorative of a wild swimming feat of a Carew."

NOTE: A Vision of Britain Through Time states that Haccombe with Combe was absorbed into the civil parish of Milber in 1901 and subsequently abolished. It would appear from the Wikipedia entry that Haccombe with Combe was resurrected sometime during the 20th century, possibly after 1974 when Teignbridge District was formed.

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.)