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- the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia
Washfield (#29 on map) is a village, parish and former manor in Devon, England, situated about 2 miles northwest of Tiverton. The parish church is dedicated to St Mary the Virgin. It was within the jurisdiction of the historic West Budleigh Hundred.
Washfield is listed in the Domesday Book of 1086 as two separate manors, now referred to as Little Washfield and Great Washfield. Washfield is situated close to Tiverton Castle, one of the most important mediaeval strongholds in Devon, and principal seat of the Earls of Devon, feudal barons of Plympton.
For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Washfield. Descriptions of the two manors and their occupants over the centuries.
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A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Washfield from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:
- "WASHFIELD, a parish and a [registration] sub-district in Tiverton [registration] district, Devon. The parish lies 2½ miles NNW of Tiverton [railway] station, and contains a village of its own name. Post town: Tiverton. Acres: 3,319. Real property: £3,689. Population: 471. Houses: 83. About one half of the land, with Worth House, belongs to J. F. Worth, Esq. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Exeter. Value: £407. Patron: J. F. Worth, Esq. The church is ancient. There are a national school, and charities £28.
From 1894 until 1974 Washfield was in the Tiverton Rural District and since 1974 local administration is dealt with by the Mid Devon District. The parish had a population of 311 in the UK census of 2011.
Registration Districts
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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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