Place:Kings Nympton, Devon, England

Watchers
NameKings Nympton
Alt namesKings-Nymptonsource: from redirect
King's Nymptonsource: WeRelate abbreviation
Nimetonasource: Domesday Book (1985) p 83
Nimetonesource: Domesday Book (1985) p 83
Nymet Regissource: Wikipedia
TypeAncient parish, Civil parish
Coordinates50.95°N 3.867°W
Located inDevon, England
See alsoWitheridge Hundred, Devon, Englandhundred of which the parish was a part
South Molton Rural, Devon, Englandrural district in which the parish was located 1894-1974
North Devon District, Devon, Englanddistrict municipality covering the area since 1974
the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Kings Nympton (#14 on map) (sometimes spelled with an apostrophe or latinised to Nymet Regis) is a village, parish and former manor in the northern part of Devon, England in the heart of the rolling countryside between Exmoor and Dartmoor, some 4½ miles (7 km) S.S.W. of South Molton and 4 miles (6 km) N. of Chulmleigh. The parish exceeds 5,500 acres (2,226 ha) in area and sits mostly on a promontory above the River Mole (anciently the Nymet) which forms nearly half of its parish boundary.

Many of the outlying farmhouses date from the 15th and 16th centuries and the village has cottages and a pub, with thatched roofs. Nearly all of its 5,540 acres are given over to agriculture with beef, sheep, dairy, arable and egg production forming the bulk of farming activity.

Before 1974 Kings Nympton was in the South Molton Rural District and since 1974 in the North Devon District.

At the time of the Domesday Book of 1086, the whole "manor of Nimetone, in the hundred of Witheridge", belonged to the King, but King Henry I (1100–1135) granted the manor to Joel de Mayne. After passing through several families, the manor was purchased by Sir Lewis Pollard (c. 1465-1526), in whose family it remained until Sir Hugh Pollard, 2nd Baronet (c.1610-1666) sold the manor to his cousin Sir Arthur Northcote, 2nd Baronet (1628–1688).

The Northcote family held the manor until 1740 when it was sold to James Buller (the younger) whose family held it until 1842 when it was purchased by James Tanner.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article King's Nympton.

Image:South Moulton RD small.png

Registration Districts

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.)
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at King's Nympton. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.