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- the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia
Lydford (#12 on map), sometimes spelled Lidford, is a civil parish (until 1987), and a village (once an important town) in Devon situated seven miles (11 km) north of Tavistock on the western fringe of Dartmoor in the West Devon District. Within Lydford is the village of Princetown, the location of Dartford Prison. The population of Lydford electoral ward in the West Devon District at the 2011 census was 2,047, while that of the village was 458.
In 1987 the parish of Lydford finally lost its claim to be the largest parish in England at 50,681 acres (20,582 hectares, 79.47 sq mi). It was split into two civil parishes, Lydford and "Dartmoor Forest". The ecclesiastical parish has also been split, with Princetown made a separate parish.
History
For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Lydford. Most of Wikipedia's article is on the Anglo-Saxon and Medieval periods.
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Princetown
The following description from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72 is provided by the website A Vision of Britain Through Time (University of Portsmouth Department of Geography).
- "PRINCETOWN, a village and a chapelry in Lidford parish, Devon. The village stands in Dartmoor-Forest Quarter, 6 miles N E of Horrabridge [railway] station, and 7½ E by S of Tavistock; and has a post-office, designated Princetown, Devon, and an inn. The chapelry contains also a great convict prison; and its limits, in some sense, are conterminate with those of Dartmoor Forest Quarter, which comprise 54,241 acres. The population of that quarter, in 1851: was 1,697, in 1861: 2,599; and, in the latter year, 1,089 were in the convict prison. The prison was erected in 1808-9, at a cost of £127,000, for French prisoners of war; was leased, for some time, to a company manufacturing naphtha from peat; was converted in 1850 into a convict prison; stands on a wild part of Dartmoor, at an elevation of about 1,400 feet above sea-level; occupies an area of about 30 acres, inclosed by a double line of lofty walls; and includes a governor's house, officers' residences, an hospital, and five buildings, each 300 feet long and 50 feet wide, for prisoners. Great georgic improvement has been made on much of the land near the village and the prison; and extensive granite quarries are on the W side of North Hessary tor, about 2 miles from the village. The living is a [perpetual] curacy in the diocese of Exeter. Value: not reported. Patron: the Prince of Wales."
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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