Kelly
Kelly is located within West Devon local authority area. Historically it formed part of Lifton Hundred. It falls within Tavistock 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 201 in 1801 167 in 1901 . Figures for other years are available on the local studies website. In 1641/2 53 adult males signed the Protestation returns.
A parish history file is held in Tavistock 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 Kelly 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 96/8 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 96NE
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SX395814. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SX38SE, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Explorer 112, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 201. Geological sheet 337 also covers the area.
Extract from Devon by W.G.Hoskins (1954), included by kind permission of the copyright holder:
KELLY lies in pleasantly rolling and wooded country. The church (St. Mary) is in the usual local 15th century style, especially noticeable in the bold W. tower with its massive pinnacles. Though the Kellys were established here at the Norman Conquest, being descended from Motbert who held the manor in 1086, there are no monuments of any note to them in the church. The Devonshire squires rarely went in for expensive marble monuments, and the Kellys were no exception. The family still survives, but Kelly House has been vacated and is now a guest-house. It is a Tudor house, remodelled in the 18th century. These parishes where old families have ruled for centuries have a flavour all their own, even a characteristic smell of wet, decaying plantations.
