Hartland
Hartland is located within Torridge local authority area. Historically it formed part of Hartland Hundred. It falls within Hartland 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 1546 in 1801 1634 in 1901 1455 in 1991. Figures for other years are available on the local studies website. In the valuation of 1334 it was assessed at £03/05/03. The lay subsidy of 1524 valued the community at £35/00/10. In 1641/2 453 adult males signed the Protestation returns. It is recorded as a borough from 1220. A market is recorded from 14c.-1888.
A parish history file is held in Bideford 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 Hartland 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 17/10 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 17SW
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SS260244. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SS22SE, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Explorer 126, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 190. Geological sheet 292 also covers the area.
Illustrations: The image below is of Hartland as included in the Library's illustrations catalogue. Other images can be searched for on the local studies catalogue.
A fair is known from: 14c.-1888. An extract from 'The glove is up! Devon's historic fairs', by Tricia Gerrish, by kind permission of the author.
HARTLAND FAIR LOCATION: B3248. Off A39 Bideford to Bude road. North West Devon
ORIGINAL CHARTER: 1280 Edward I to Oliver de Dynham (also Dinham). 3 day fair at the feast of St Nectan (17th June)
A GLOVE FAIR
Oliver de Dynham, Lord of the Manor of Harton, or Herctone, received the first fairs charter in 1280, for a three day event at the feast of Saint Nectan. In 1285 he obtained another, for a late autumn fair between 29th November and 1st December. In 1559: the second year of Elizabeth I's reign, a further grant was made to Lewis Pollard (Recorder of Exeter), Robert Cary of Clovelly, William Abbott, Hugh Stucley and Hugh Prust of Gorven. Fairs were to be held on Easter Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and at the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (14th September) for three days. The profits from tolls and charges at these Elizabethan fairs were to be used to benefit the inhabitants of Harton (Hartland).
The fair on St Nectan's Day almost certainly evolved into a Saint's Day revel. Following the calendar change in 1752, Easter fair remained on Easter Wednesday and is listed by Owen and the Lysons and appears in 1890 directories. Holy Cross Fair's date moved to 25th September, which also appears in both sources. Other fairs took place at the West Country Inn, beginning in approximately 1879, on the first Wednesday in August and third Thursday in October, selling livestock. In 1880 sheep and young oxen totalling 800 were sold there.
All the fairs were noted for cattle sales. Autumn fairs also traded sheep: fetching at least 30 shillings per ewe. Fat hogs sold for the same sum on average in 1898; cows with calves: £11 and £15. At spring fair gypsies and tinkers camped, and sold horses.
In early days the Easter and Holy Cross fairs at Hartland were Glove Fairs. A pair of white gloves on a pole was hung from a window at the Town Hall for the duration. Hartland's town accounts show a charge for these nearly every year: 'pd. for gloves att both ffaiores.' Not in 1624 or 1625 however, when plague forced their cancellation. Courts of Pie Powder: Pied Pouldre, or Poudre, were also held for the Easter and September fairs, under the Elizabethan charter, to settle disputes and check measures.
Sales of livestock at the West Country Inn continued until approximately 1920, when they were supplanted by a monthly market. This in turn ceased in about 1963. There are no press reports for the Easter and September fairs much beyond 1900. In 1899, R. Pearse Chope, in Notes of the Past (Hartland Chronicle) says that they were still held, 'although I fear they have lost much of their importance.'
Extract from Devon by W.G.Hoskins (1954), included by kind permission of the copyright holder:
HARTLAND is a small town and an immense parish of some 17,900 acres occupying the peninsula in the extreme NW. corner of Devon. It contains the most impressive cliff scenery in England and Wales, above all the iron coast from Hartland Point southwards (plate 22), with its coastal waterfalls. The sea-scapes are superb, for there is no land between this coast and America:
Where on Hartland's tempest-furrowed shore Breaks the long swell from farthest Labrador.
Inland the scenery is very Cornish in feeling: ,white farmhouses and cottages dotted about an immense grey land-scape, the clustered hamlets at intervals, grey stone and slate everywhere, even a Cornish name or two, like Trellick and Velly. One could write a chapter about this wide, buzzard-haunted countryside, so remote and withdrawn from the villainies of the human race, far from railways and the lunacies of the modern world. Buzzards sail slowly above the quiet combes, throwing their shadows on the sunlit slopes below, the wild bubbling cry of curlews is every-where on the moory grounds above, swallows flash in and out of ancient slate-grey courtyards: it is a timeless scene.
Hartland means "stag-island," though the district is in fact a peninsula. There are earthworks-"cliff castles"- at Embury Beacon and Windbury Head, perhaps associated originally with the immense Early Iron Age hill-fort of Clovelly Dykes. Tradition says there was a third of these "cliff castles" at Hartland Point, now undermined by the sea. On Bursdon Moor there are numerous round barrows, probably of Bronze Age date, the beginning of a long series which is scattered across North Devon to the very summit of Exmoor. Hartland enters history as a royal estate. In his will King Alfred left it to Edward, his elder son, and it remained a royal possession until the reign of Canute who apparently granted it to Gytha on her marriage to Godwin. (Chope, The Book of Hartland, 19.) At the Norman Conquest it was seized by William, but soon after his death it was granted to one of the Dynham family (from Dinant in Brittany), in which family it descended until 1501. It was then divided among four co-heiresses, and the later history is somewhat complicated. Like so many ancient royal estates, Hartland gave its name to a hundred.
Oliver de Dynham created a borough at Hartland c. 1290, having obtained (in 1280) the grant of a market and a three-day fair at the feast of St. Nectan. The town was too far removed from trade-routes to come to anything much. In the 18th century it was described as being as depressed-looking as a Cornish borough. Its market ceased about 1780. Nevertheless, the town grew steadily in numbers until the 1840s, and then began to decline. Today it has about 1,300 people, not much more than half the size of a hundred years ago. It is a pleasant little town, mostly of one street, with a few solid 18th-early 19th century houses of some character, and a number of old-fashioned shops; the nearest railway station is Bideford (13 m.) but buses now run through it on the Bideford-Bude route, a fine run for scenery.
The parish church (St. Nectan) is at Stoke, 2 m. W. It has a lofty 15th century tower (128 ft.) visible far out at sea. A collegiate church was founded here by Gytha c. 1050, and dedicated to St. Nectan, as a thank-offering for the escape of her husband Earl Godwin from shipwreck. In 1066 there were twelve canons here. This college of secular canons was refounded by Geoffrey de Dynham in 1169 as an Arroasian monastery of regular canons on a new site in the valley below. Nothing remains of Hartland Abbey to-day, except a fragment of the cloisters in the present house, which was rebuilt in 1779.
The parish church perpetuates the old site of Gytha's collegiate church. It is a splendid building, and of the highest interest. The rood-screen (c. 1470) is magnificent, extending nearly 48 ft. across nave and aisles, and in perfect condition. The cornices are particularly rich; but the whole screen calls for detailed study. Many other features of the church call for notice: a splendid Norman font, carved bench-ends (early 16th century) in the N. transept, the roofs, especially that of the N. chancel aisle, the priest's chamber in which Parson Hawker wrote "The Bell by the Sea," and the numerous floor-slabs and monuments to the gentry of the parish.
The parish is dotted with interesting houses and most picturesque farmsteads, of which one can only recite a catalogue-South Hole, Docton, Eddistone, Milford, Long Furlong, and Blegberry, to name only a few. East Titchberry now belongs to the National Trust.
Hartland Point one of the boldest headlands on the English coast, has generally been identified as the Hercules Promontory of Ptolemy's geography. A lighthouse was built here in 1874, and a powerful foghorn installed. The summit of the headland was reduced in area for the protection of the lighthouse, but it is still an impressive and savage piece of coast. Hartland is another of those Devonshire parishes in which one could happily spend a week in leisurely exploration, better still a fortnight, and best of all in the spring; and one would always wish to return to it. A very good book has been written about it -Chope's Book of Hartland (1940)-which is indispepsable to the explorer.
