Cheriton Bishop
Cheriton Bishop is located within Teignbridge local authority area. Historically it formed part of Wonford Hundred. It falls within Kenn 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 604 in 1801 455 in 1901 . Figures for other years are available on the local studies website. In 1641/2 154 adult males signed the Protestation returns.
A parish history file is held in Crediton 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 Cheriton Bishop 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 78/8 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 78NE
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SX773930. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SX79SE, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Explorer 113, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 191. Geological sheet 324 also covers the area.
Extract from The glove is up! Devon's historic fairs, by Tricia Gerrish, by kind permission of the author.
CHERITON BISHOP. LOCATION:A30, West of Exeter
ORIGINAL CHARTER:None found, but a Pleasure fair still took place on the Wednesday in Whitsun week in 1890.
Extract from Devon by W.G.Hoskins (1954), included by kind permission of the copyright holder:
CHERITON BISHOP is a small village in unspoilt country just N. of the Exeter to Okehampton main road. There must have been a church here in the 11th century as the name means "church town."
There were numerous small manors in the parish, of which Crockernwell, Eggbear, Lambert, and Medland are all recorded in Domesday Book. Treable is a Celtic place-name: there can be little doubt that it has been continuously inhabited since Celtic times. Grendon is mentioned in a Saxon charter of 739. Small pockets of Celtic people remained undisturbed in this remote, forested country long after the Saxon occupation, as witness also the adjacent nymet place-names (nymet derives from a Celtic word for a "sacred grove"). Easton Barton occurs in 1157 but is possibly a pre-Conquest site: the name means ..Ethelric's or Elfric's farm."
Crockernwell is a hamlet on the Exeter-Okehampton road which has been the main route from Exeter into Cornwall from time immemorial. Parts of the road are undoubtedly on the line of a prehistoric ridgeway. A small settlement grew up at Crockernwell as early as Saxon times; and in 1390 Bishop Brantyngham licensed a chapel here
Cheriton church (St. Mary) is an interesting building: plastered, whitened, and ceiled throughout, and altogether pleasant. The fine plain granite tower is 15th century, and the nave and N. aisle are of the same date; but the chancel is 13th century with good lancet windows in red Posbury stone. The S. wall of the nave was rebuilt in the reconstruction of 1884, and the windows spoilt. The fittings of the church are noteworthy. The font is profusely ornamented Norman work. In the N. aisle is a fine medieval screen with most of its original colouring; old benches with carved ends, roof bosses, some 15th century glass, the royal arms of Elizabeth on a hatchment (rare), and the royal arms of George II above. The upper part of the pulpit is elaborately carved 16th century work.
