Place:Sampford Courtenay, Devon, England

From 1894 until 1974 Sampford Courtenay (#23 on map) was a civil parish in the Okehampton Rural District and since 1974 local administration is dealt with by the West Devon District. It has a 21st century population of just over 500. The Church of St Andrew is mainly built of granite and has an elegant tower. It was served by the nearby Sampford Courtenay railway station at Belstone Corner. This station still operates as a halt on the Dartmoor Railway summer weekend service between Okehampton and Exeter. [edit] History Sampford Courtenay is most famous for being the place where the Western Rebellion, otherwise known as the Prayerbook rebellion, first started in 1549, and where the rebels made their final stand. In 1549, during the reign of King Edward VI (the boy king, son of Henry VIII), the wikipedia:Book of Common Prayer, presenting the theology of the English Reformation, was introduced. The change was widely unpopular and led to riots which were put down forcefully by the army mercenaries under the command of Lord Protector, the Duke of Somerset. Throughout western Devon and Cornwall thousands were killed. For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Prayer Book Rebellion.

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Sampford Courtenay from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1871-72:

"SAMPFORD-COURTNEY, a village and a parish in Okehampton [registration] district, Devon. The village stands in a fine spot, 1½ mile N of Okehampton Road [railway] station; and has a post-office designated Sampford-Courtney, North Devon, and a cattle fair on the Tuesday after 1 July. The parish contains also the village of Sticklepath, and the hamlets of Corscombe and Willy. Acres: 7,962. Real property: £5,936. Population in 1851: 1,084; in 1861: 991. Houses: 204. The manor belongs to King's College, Cambridge. A Cistertian monastery was founded at Brightley in 1136, by Richard Fitz-Baldwin; and was removed to Ford {Abbey]. An insurrection occurred in 1549, in consequence of an alteration in the church service; became so formidable as to make siege of Exeter; and was suppressed, by Lord Russell, at Clist, St. Mary. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Exeter. Value: £650. Patron: King's College, Cambridge. The church is later English, in good condition; and has a lofty tower. There are a chapel of ease and a Wesleyan chapel."

Ford Abbey, mentioned by Wilson, is in Thorncombe parish on the border of Dorset and Devon.

Honeychurch

Honeychurch was originally an ancient parish in the Black Torrington Hundred of northwest Devon.

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Honeychurch from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1871-72:

"HONEY-CHURCH, a parish in Okehampton [registration] district, Devon; near the river Taw, 2 miles WNW of North Tawton [railway] station, and 5½ ESE of Hatherleigh. Post town: North Tawton, North Devon. Acres: 607. Real property: £497. Population: 44. Houses: 9. The property is subdivided; and the manor belongs to the Earl of Portsmouth. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Exeter. Value: £93. Patron: the Rev. Dr. Brailsford. The church is old, and has a tower."

In 1894 the parish was abolished and absorbed into the neighbouring parish of Sampford Courtenay. By 1894 there were only 8 houses. (Source: A Vision of Britain through Time)

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.)