Place:Swimbridge, Devon, England

Watchers
NameSwimbridge
Alt namesBirigesource: Domesday Book (1985) p 87
Swymbridgesource: ancient spelling (Wikipedia)
TypeAncient parish, Civil parish
Coordinates51.033°N 3.95°W
Located inDevon, England
See alsoSouth Molton Hundred, Devon, Englandhundred of which the parish was a part
Barnstaple 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

Swimbridge (historical spelling: Swymbridge) (#31 on map) is a village in the English county of Devon. It is 4 miles (6.4 km) southeast of Barnstaple. Before the changes to parish boundaries in 2003, at 7,280 acres (29.5 km2) it was one of the largest in North Devon. Before 1974 Swimbridge was in the Barnstaple Rural District and since 1974 in the North Devon District. Leather tanning was a major local industry until 1965.

The name Swimbridge originates from the clergyman Sawin Birige, who founded a chapelry at Swymbridge in Anglo-Saxon times. Birige held lands around the village which were known as Birige.

The village is noted for its church (The Parish Church of St. James; tower ca. 1300) which has been described as a treasure house due to its fine carvings and memorials.

The village was the home of the Rev. John "Jack" Russell who first bred the Parson Russell Terrier. The Reverend Russell is said to have brought his first terrier, Trump, whilst he was studying at Oxford University and then bred from her to eventually originate the Parson Jack Russell strain of terrier. John Russell died in 1883 and his grave can be found in the graveyard of St. James's Church; the village pub is named after him and his breed of terrier.

From 1873 to 1966, Swimbridge had a station on the Devon and Somerset Railway, which became part of the Great Western Railway and which ran from Taunton to Barnstaple. The alignment of the railway line through Swimbridge station is now part of the North Devon Link Road.

Image:Barnstaple 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 Swimbridge. 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.