Place:Petrockstowe, Devon, England

Watchers
NamePetrockstowe
Alt namesPetrochestousource: Domesday Book (1985) p 85
Petrockstowsource: alternate spelling
Stow St. Petrocksource: alternate name, early 19th century
Heanton Satchville at Petrockstowesource: former manor in parish
Ash Moorsource: ball clay extraction area
TypeAncient parish, Civil parish
Coordinates50.85°N 4.1°W
Located inDevon, England
See alsoShebbear Hundred, Devon, Englandhundred of which the parish was a part
Torrington Rural, Devon, Englandrural district 1894-1974
Torridge District, Devon, Englanddistrict municipality since 1974
the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Petrockstowe (or Petrockstow) (#15 on map) is a civil parish with a small village of the same name in the Torridge District of Devon, England. The southern boundary of the parish lies on the River Torridge, and it is surrounded, clockwise from the north, by the parishes of Peters Marland (#14), Merton (#13), Huish (#9), Meeth (not on map), Highampton (not on map) and Buckland Filleigh (#4).

The village lies about four miles NNW of the town of Hatherleigh and is some two miles west of the A386 road, accessible only by minor roads. Its population in the UK census of 2001 was 379, hardly different from the figure of 385 recorded in 1901.

The first documentary mention of the place is in the Domesday Book of 1086. St. Mary's Abbey of Buckfast (Buckfast Abbey) was the lord in 1066 and 1086 and tenant-in-chief in 1086. Nearby places then included: Allisland, Heanton, Hele, Little Marland and Varleys. Sometime after 1086, Petrockstowe was owned by someone other than the abbey. In the 12th century, Robert Warelwast, Bishop of Exeter, restored the manors of Petrockstowe and Ash, also in Petrockstowe, to Buckfast Abbey. It was also owned by the abbey during the reign of Edward I (1272-1307).

Image:Torrington RD small.png

By 1822, it was called both Stow St. Petrock and Petrockstow, and it was located in the Hundred of Shebbear and Deanery of Torrington. In the 19th century the village had a school, funded by Lord Clinton of Heanton Satchville (see below), and many businesses such as a tannery, blacksmiths, shoemakers and wheelwrights.

Petrockstow railway station was about a mile away from the village. The original Torrington and Marland Railway was built in the late 19th century to carry ball clay to Torrington from the Marland and Meeth clay pits. In 1925 this became the basis of the northern section of the North Devon and Cornwall Junction Light Railway, which remained a private line until 1948 when it became part of the Southern Region of British Railways. The Beeching Axe closed the line to passengers in 1965, but it remained open for freight until 1982.

In the southeast of the parish, at Ash Moor, there are opencast workings for ball clay that extend into the neighbouring parish of Meeth; these clay deposits are in a geological feature known as the Petrockstow Basin, and have been worked for hundreds of years.

The parish church is dedicated to Saint Petroc. On the north wall of the church are affixed two monumental brasses of Henry Rolle and his wife Margaret Yeo (d.1591), the heiress of the manor of Heanton Satchville within the parish.. The two brasses were probably originally one, with the Rolle shield in the centre. These are pictured in Wikipedia

Heanton Satchville

There are very few traces of the mansion of Heanton Satchville surviving today, but it was at one time "one of the most imposing houses ever to exist in Devon". It was the second largest house in Devon in 1674. The manor was mentioned in the Domesday Book, and was then owned by the Sachvilles and Kelligrews, before it passed into the hands of the Yeo family. By 1359 it was owned by William Yeo when he was Sheriff of Devon. Margaret Yeo, the sole heiress of Robert Yeo, married Henry Rolle, (died about 1620), and thus the manor passed to the Rolles, now represented by the Barons Clinton. The house was destroyed by fire in 1795, after which the Trefusis family purchased a mansion in nearby Huish, renamed it Heanton Satchville, and made it their seat. The family line of the Clintons is given in Wikipedia.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Heanton Satchville, Petrockstowe.

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.)