Braunton
Braunton is located within North Devon local authority area. Historically it formed part of Braunton Hundred. It falls within Barnstaple Deanery for ecclesiastical purposes. The Deaneries are used to arrange the typescript Church Notes of B.F.Cresswell which are held in the Westcountry Studies Library. The population was 1296 in 1801 2135 in 1901 . Figures for other years are available on the local studies website.In the valuation of 1334 it was assessed at £08/13/04. The lay subsidy of 1524 valued the community at £22/05/01. In 1641/2 383 adult males signed the Protestation returns. A turnpike was established in 1829. The community had a grammar school from 1667.
A parish history file is held in Braunton Library. You can look for other material on the community by using the place search on the main local studies database. Further historical information is also available on the Genuki website
Maps: The image below is of the Braunton area on Donn's one inch to the mile survey of 1765.
On the County Series Ordnance Survey mapping the area is to be found on 1:2,500 sheet 8/11,12,15,16 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 8SE
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SS487366. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SS43NE, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Explorer 139, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 180. Geological sheet 292 also covers the area.
Extract from Devon by W.G.Hoskins (1954), included by kind permission of the copyright holder:
BRAUNTON is an exceptionally interesting parish. One can only echo Preb. Chanter's words (in The Church of St. Brannock, Braunton) that with "its huge area of over ten thousand acres of rich cornlands, meadows, marshes, moorlands and rolling sandhills, its chapels-of-ease, ancient and modern, its many manors and manor houses, [it] is full of interest alike to the antiquarian, the ecclesiologist, the historian, and the botanist." The reader is referred to that guide for a detailed description of the church and the chapels, and for an account of St. Brannoc, the Welsh missionary-saint of the 6th century to whom the church is dedicated.
Braunton, which is the Brannocmynster of a 9th century charter, owes its origin to St. Brannoc, who crossed from Wales and founded a chapel here, perhaps at Buckland where there is a St. Brannock's Well and where a chapel dedicated to the saint formerly stood. The saint is buried in Braunton church, possibly under the high altar; and his foundation became a minsteror collegiate church by 857, when Brannocmynster was given to Glastonbury abbey "for the taking of salmon." The present church, of unusual plan, is mostly 13th century with a great deal of later detail (the early 16th century). Its most remarkable feature is the wide nave, covered by a fine roof (c. 1500) enriched with bosses. The carved bench-ends, of various dates between 1500 and 1600, are among the finest of their kind in England, and demand detailed inspection. There is a good deal of excellent Jacobean woodwork (esp. pulpit, reading-desk and gallery in the N. transept) and an early chancel screen of very unusual design, though rather meagre in character. There are many interesting 16th and18th century monuments to the gentry of the parish, especially those of the Bellews of Ash and the Incledons of Incledon, and a curious palimpsest brass to Lady Elizabeth Bowcer (Bourchier), daughter of the earl of Bath (1548).
The village has grown greatly by reason of its nearness to Barnstaple, and has acquired a somewhat suburban character, but some excellent traditional building may be found in East Street, South Street and Church Street. In the latter, Nos. 33-5 (formerly one house) are dated 1579. No. 17 East Street and No.7 South Street are similar in style. These houses, formerly good farmhouses, are a characteristic type of building in many North Devon villages, with their massive stone chimney breasts on the street, beside the front door. Broadgateisan Elizabethan house, formerly a manor house called The Hall. It contains a plaster mantelpiece dated 1626. The S. block is medieval, with a fine roof of 14th century date.
St. Michael's chapel is a conspicuous ruin on the top of a hill NE. of the village, built in the 15th century as a votive chapel for sailors and fishermen, where prayers were said for them and a look-out kept. It was a conspicuous landmark from the sea. St. Anne's chapel, at the S. end of the Burrows, stood somewhere near the present lighthouse and marked the ancient crossing of the estuary from Appledore. This route fell into disuse in the early19th century, the chapel decayed and is now quite gone, and the old road over the Burrows to Saunton has been lost.
There were formerly several families of gentry scattered about this large and fertile parish, their "mansions" being at Beer Charter, Buckland, Incledon, Saunton, Lobb, Fairlinch, Ash and Luscott. Most of these houses retain considerable evidence of their ancient status.
Braunton Great Field, to the SW. of the village, is one of the three surviving open-field areas left in England, still cultivated upon the "strip-system," but it is dwindling in area. Within living memory, some eighty-five small farmers cultivated this Field and the strips up on the Down to the E., but there are now only twelve.
