Eggesford
Eggesford is located within Mid Devon local authority area. Historically it formed part of Winkleigh Hundred. It falls within Chulmleigh 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 173 in 1801 126 in 1901 . Figures for other years are available on the local studies website. In 1641/2 32 adult males signed the Protestation returns.
A parish history file is held in Chulmleigh 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 Eggesford 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 42/12 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 42SE
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SS687111. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SS61SE, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Explorer 127, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 191. Geological sheet 309 also covers the area.
Illustrations: The image below is of Eggesford as included in the Library's illustrations collection. Other images can be searched for on the local studies catalogue.
Extract from Devon by W.G.Hoskins (1954), included by kind permission of the copyright holder:
EGGESFORD has no village. The church (All Saints) stands alone in what was once the park of a great house. The estate belonged to the Coplestones in the 16th century, an ancient Devon family with nearly as many branches as the Chichesters. Edward Chichester, afterwardsYiscountChichester, married the Coplestone heiress and inherited Eggesford through her in 1606. She died in 1616, he in 1648, and they lie under a noble monument in the church. This monument was begun by Edward Chichester, and completed by his son, Arthur, Earl of Donegal (1606-75). There is another "most sumptuous monument" to the latter, and his two wives, "where he standeth in full and just proportion, curiously cut out of pure alabaster, finely polished, between his two ladies, lying in effigy by." He was the nephew of Arthur Chichester, Baron Chichester of Belfast (1563-1625), the Lord Deputy of Ireland, and made his own career in Irish politics. His two wives died long before him, and Arthur Chichester raised this magnificent memorial in 1650, 25 years before his own death. These two monuments are among the finest of their kind in Devon: only the Tawstock monuments of the Earls of Bath are comparable with them. Eggesford was bought by William Fellowes, Esq., in 1718, to whom there is a good monument (1723). The church was much rebuilt in 1867, but is still very pleasing both inside and outside.
The old Eggesford House was demolished about 1832 when the Hon. Newton Fellowes built the present Eggesford House, which is actually in the parish of Wembworthy. It probably stood in front of the large walled garden which remains on the hillside near the church.
