|
|
- the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia
Teignmouth is a seaside town, fishing port and civil parish in the English county of Devon. It is situated on the north bank of the estuary mouth of the River Teign, about 12 miles south of Exeter. The town had a population of 14,749 at the last census in 2011.
From the 1800s onwards, the town rapidly grew in size from a fishing port associated with the Newfoundland cod industry to a fashionable resort of some note in Georgian times, with further expansion after the opening of the South Devon Railway in 1846. Today, its port still operates and the town remains a popular seaside and day trip holiday location.
For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Teignmouth. It includes a long history section.
Teignmouth was a parish in the ancient hundred of Teignbridge. It was made into two parishes of West Teignmouth and East Teignmouth in 1837. These were merged into the town of Teignmouth in 1909 after working together in an urban district from 1894. Teignmouth became part of the district municipality called the Teignbridge District in 1974.
| 
|
A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Teignmouth from John Bartholomew's Gazetteer of the British Isles of 1887:
- "Teignmouth, market town, seaport, and watering-place, Devon, at mouth of river Teign, 15 miles S. of Exeter and 209 miles SW. of London by rail, 1238 ac., pop. 7120; P.O., T.O. [telegraph office], 2 Banks, 2 newspapers. Market-day, Saturday. The town consists of the two parishes of East Teignmouth (745 ac., pop. 2482) and West Teignmouth (493 ac., pop. 4638). East Teignmouth is the watering-place; West Teignmouth is the port and place of business. (For shipping statistics, see Appendix.) The chief industries are shipbuilding and fishing.
- "Two of the principal objects of interest are the Den, a promenade formed from a sandbank between the town and the sea, and the wooden bridge, of 34 arches and 1672 ft. long, the longest wooden bridge in England, which connects Teignmouth with the village of Shaldon. Teignmouth furnished its quota of ships and men to the siege of Calais in 1347, and was thrice burnt by the French, twice about that time, and again in 1690."
Registration Districts
-
From 1837 until 1909 East Teignmouth and West Teignmouth were separate parishes for registration purposes.
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.)
|
|
