Place:St. Marychurch, Devon, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

:the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia St. Marychurch in Torbay, Devon, England, is one of the oldest settlements in the southern part of Devon. Its earliest documentary record dates from around 1050 AD. Its name derives from the church of St Mary, which was founded in Anglo-Saxon times. St. Marychurch's life as an urban district existed only from 1894 until 1900 when it was incorporated into the neighbouring borough of Torquay. In 1900 Chelston and Livermead (part of the Cockington estate owned by the Mallocks) were annexed by Torquay and this was followed by the absorption of the former borough of St. Marychurch. In this period St. Marychurch covered Plainmoor, Watcombe, Babbacombe and Kingskerswell. (Source: Wikpedia on Torquay)

A map of the main Torbay part of Torquay depicting most of its various regions in the Torbay area only but leaves out half of Livermead and all of Edginswell, Kingskerswell and Maidencombe completely. St. Marychurch consists of the northern coloured areas. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

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

"MARYCHURCH (ST.), a village and a parish in Newton-Abbot [registration] district, Devon. The village overlooks Babbicombe bay, 1½ mile E by N of Torre [railway] station, and 1½ N by E of Torquay; is a large place, built chiefly of marble rock, and containing many genteel houses and marine Villas; resembles Torquay in the style of its buildings, and may be regarded as suburban to that town; attracts summer visitors for sea-bathing and for yachting; and has a post office‡ under Torquay, several good inns, a coast-guard station, and bathing-machines.

"The parish contains also the hamlets of Babbicombe, Barton, Comb-Pafford, Edginswell, Shiphay-Collaton, and Watcombe. Acres: 2,589. Real property: £14,182; of which £120 are in quarries. Population in 1851: 2,293; in 1861: 3,231. Houses: 618. The increase of population arose from improvements by land-proprietors, and from advantages for the erection of houses. The property is much subdivided. The manor of St. Marychurch belongs to R. S. Carey, Esq.; and that of Comb-Pafford, to Sir Lawrence Palk.

"The surface, particularly along the coast, abounds in features of interest. Famous marble quarries, with remarkable formation of limestone rock, and with profusion of beautiful fossils, are at Petit Tor. A broken piece of ground, encircled by fantastic red cliffs, at Watcombe, marks the results of a romantic landslip.

"The living is a vicarage, united with the vicarage of Coffinswell, in the diocese of Exeter. Value: £270. Patrons: the Dean and Chapter of Exeter. The church stands on high ground; serves as a landmark to mariners; is partly an old building with a tower; and recently was, in great measure, rebuilt, at a cost of about £6,000. A chapel of ease, called the Free church, stands at Furrough-Cross. The vicarage of Babbicombe is a separate benefice. There are chapels for Baptists and Wesleyans, national schools, and charities £5."

Notable former residents include 19th century zoologist and creationist Philip Henry Gosse, who lived at Sandhurst on Torquay Road (now called St Marychurch Road).

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.)