Littlehempston
Littlehempston is located within South Hams local authority area. Historically it formed part of Haytor Hundred. It falls within Totnes 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.
A parish history file is held in Totnes 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 here is of the Littlehempston 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 121/2 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 121NW
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SX813627. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SX86SW, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Explorer 031, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 202. Geological sheet 350 also covers the area.
Illustrations: The image below is of Littlehempston 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:
HEMPSTON, LITTLE has two exceptionally interesting buildings the parish church and the medieval manor house. The former (St.John the Baptist) is an attractive building with a fine W. tower. The chancel and the font are 14th century, but the rest of the church is 15th century. The window tracery was inserted in 1863. There is a 15th century rood-screen, of which the loft and vaulting have disappeared, and parclose screens of the same date. In the window recesses of the S. aisle are three 14th century effigies which are thought to represent members of the Arundell family, who possessed the manor from the time of Henry I.
The old manor house, one of the most perfectly preserved medieval buildings in England, has been continuously inhabited since it was built in the late 14th century. The house was occupied as a parsonage from the middle of the 15th century until 1921, whence it acquired its name of the Old Parsonage. It consists of an outer courtyard 45 ft. square, and a tiny inner courtyard (only 20 ft. by 18 ft.) round which the house is built. The hall is small (2 bays) and perfect, with its original plaster to within four feet of the floor. At the far end is a fresco (c. 1450) of the Resurrection, in a remarkably good state of preservation. The primitive original screens remain. There is no trace of a fireplace; the presumption is that there was a central hearth. From the corner of the hall a circular stone staircase leads to the solar above, and the original kitchen lies behind this stair."
