Place:Highweek, Devon, England

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia Highweek (#13 on map) (anciently called Teignwick (alias Teyngewike, Tingwike, Teyngewyk, etc.)), less commonly called Highweek Village, in the Teignbridge District of Devon, England, is a parish, former manor and village, and now a suburb of, and administered by, the town of Newton Abbot. Newton Abbot is located on the southern bank of the River Lemon. Highweek, to the north of the river, still retains its village identity and is prominent and recognisable due to its high location on a ridge on the north edge of the town. The area is the centre of the modern electoral ward of Bradley. Its population at the 2011 census was 5,043. (See the Nomis website for a map of Bradley to compare with the map of the whole of Newton Abbot today.) Following the Norman Conquest of 1066 the Normans built a motte-and-bailey castle here, of which only a dyke or ditch remains (giving it the local name of "Castle Dyke"). The castle was probably occupied until the mid 13th century, when the chief residence of the locality became Bradley House. The mediaeval parish church, dedicated to All Saints, is now a :Grade I listed building. It was consecrated in 1428. Until 1864 it served as a chapel of ease to the parish church of adjoining Kingsteignton having been built after the villagers petitioned the pope for their own graveyard. The manor of Teignwick/Highwick was held by the Bushel family for nine generations until the death of John Bushel, the last in the male line, during the reign of King Richard II (1377-1399). During the 13th century the settlement north of the River Lemon became known as Newton Bushel after the Bushel family. By 1301 it was being called Heghwyk, the reference to the prominent (high) hill on which it stands having taken over from the earlier Teignwick, although the latter name was still in use as late as 1850. In the nineteenth century Newton Bushel combined with "New Town of the Abbots" (of Torre Abbey) from the south side of the River Lemon to form what became known as Newton Abbot. Newton Abbot, including Highweek parish, became an urban district in 1901. Highweek continues to be joined to Newton Abbot and is administratively part of Newton Abbot under Newton Abbot Town Council and Teignbridge District Council.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Highweek.

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.)