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- the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia
Branscombe (#4 on map) is a village and civil parish in the East Devon District of the English county of Devon.
The parish covers 3,440 acres (1,390 ha). Its permanent population was reported as 507 at the UK Census of 2011.
From the 17th to the 19th centuries, Branscombe was a source of hand-made lace, and Branscombe Point is a style that is still practised by lacemakers worldwide. Fishing was also a traditional industry, as well as a source of food. The manufacture of flints for early guns and the cooking of limestone to make fertiliser were short-lived but important local enterprises in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The current Church of Saint Winifred was built between 1133 and 1160 in the Norman era and enlarged in stages over the following 200 years.
Aethelweard (c.880-922), the youngest son of King Alfred the Great and his wife Ealhswith whom he married in 868, inherited Branscombe by his father's will of 899, a copy of which is now in the British Library.
The church contains a memorial of the Wadham family originally of Wadham Manor, Knowstone, in north Devon and later seated at Merryfield, Ilton, Somerset, who lived at Edge in the north of the parish from the end of the fourteenth century, and later used it as their dower house. When Nicholas Wadham died in 1609, part of his fortune was used to found Wadham College, Oxford.
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GENUKI provides the following description of Branscombe from White's Devonshire Directory of 1850:
- "BRANSCOMBE, a pleasant village, on the coast of the English channel, at the mouth of a rivulet, 5 miles E. by N. of Sidmouth, and S.W. of Colyton, has in its parish 956 souls, and 3422 [acres] 3 [rods] 18 [poles] of land, including Dean and Weston hamlets, and many scattered houses. The Dean and Chapter of Exeter are lords of the manor, owners of most of the soil, appropriators of the great tithes, and patrons of the vicarage, valued in K.B. at £18. 15s. 10d., and in 1831 at £190, and now enjoyed by the Rev. S.H. Peppin, B.A., who has 10 [acres] of glebe, and an ancient residence, mantled with ivy and vines. The great tithes were commuted in 1843, for £242, and the vicarial for £225 per annum. The Church (St. Winifred,) is a cruciform Gothic structure, with a tower and five bells. The Stuckey and Bartlett families were long seated at Weston Barton, as lessees of the manor; and Edge Barton was anciently the seat of the Branscombes, one of whom was sheriff of the county for five years, in the reign of Edward III. Many women and girls in this neighbourhood are employed in making lace, and here are quarries of excellent freestone. The Wesleyans have a small chapel in the village." (Source: White's Devonshire Directory (1850), courtesy of GENUKI)
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.
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- 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.
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- 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.)
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