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Weston Peverell (#23) on map) was a civil parish which existed between 1899 and 1935. It was preceded by a chapelry and civil parish named Pennycross (#13) (redirected here). White's Devonshire Directory (see below) states that Pennycross was a chapelry of Plymouth St. Andrew, one of the two ancient parishes that formed the city of Plymouth.
From White's Devonshire Directory (1850), as provided by GENUKI
- "PENNYCROSS, otherwise Western Peverell or St. Pancras, is a chapelry, containing 1310 acres of land, and 276 souls, and includes part of Mutley and Ford Park, and several handsome houses. The manor was anciently held by the Peverells, and afterwards by the Carew, Hewer, and other families, and is now held by the Rev. J.H. Parlby, of Manadon, formerly the seat of the Hewers. The Chapel (St. Pancras) is an ancient building, and the curacy is annexed to the vicarage of St. Andrew [Plymouth]."
From John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72, as provided by A History of Britain through Time
- "PENNYCROSS, or Weston-Peverell, a chapelry in Plymouth, St. Andrew parish, Devon; adjoining Stoke [Damerel], and 2 miles N N W of Plymouth. Post-town: Plymouth. Acres: 1,281; of which 50 are water. Rated property: £4,397. Population: 315. Houses: 60. The property is much subdivided. There are several genteel residences. The living is a [perpetual] curacy, annexed to the vicarage of [Plymouth] St. Andrew, in the diocese of Exeter. The church is later English, and good."
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Wikipedia, in an article entitled "Peverell" states:
- "Peverell is a neighbourhood of Plymouth in the English county of Devon. The 2001 UK Census estimated the population as 6,455, increasing dramatically to 13,553 at the 2011 UK census."
The sources above indicate that Pennycross and Weston Peverell were one and the same place and A History of Britain through Time goes on to say that Pennycross was a civil parish between 1866 and 1898 when there were several exchanges of land between neighbouring parishes. The outcome of these transfers made Weston Peverell a civil parish between 1899 and 1935. (Source: A History of Britain through Time.)
In 1935 the parish, which was located north of the Devonport or Stoke Damerel part of Plymouth, was amalgamated into the City of Plymouth. Between 1894 and 1935 it had been part of Plympton St. Mary Rural District.
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.)
- Users studying the Plymouth area are recommended to check the GENUKI page for Plymouth which is lengthy but recently updated (summer 2015). Two entries under the heading "Genealogy" are:
- Donald Curkeet's Plymouth Devonshire and Surrounding Parishes for Family Genealogy website provides church and churhyard photographs, and information, in some cases including parish register name indexes, for a number of Plymouth area parishes. He provided a very useful sketchmap.
- Plymouth is one of the growing number of places for which the Devon Heritage website provides census or parish register transcriptions, articles, and/or illustrations, etc. (For Plymouth they supply lists on specific events or groups of people at varying dates.)
- The Plymouth Museums Art Galleries website describes the 'Of the Parish' headstone and memorial indexing and photography project with explanations of how to search for names in various indexes provided by a number of local groups. The remains in many of the early cemeteries within Plymouth were transferred to the cemetery in Egg Buckland or Eggbuckland after World War II. Other sections of this website might also be of interest to genealogists searching for ancestors in the Plymouth area.
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