Lynton
Lynton is located within North Devon local authority area. Historically it formed part of Sherwill Hundred. It falls within Shirwell 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 481 in 1801 1641 in 1901 . Figures for other years are available on the local studies website. The lay subsidy of 1524 valued the community at £01/03/08. In 1641/2 117 adult males signed the Protestation returns.
A parish history file is held in Lynton 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 Lynton 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 3/9 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 3SW
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SS719493. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SS74NW, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Outdoor Leisure 09, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 180. Geological sheet 277 also covers the area.
Illustrations: The image below is of Lynton 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:
LYNTON includes Lynmouth, at the foot of the tremendous hog-backed cliffs, which rise to over 1,000 ft. in places. The scenery of this parish, coast, moorland, and valley, is too well known to call for further description, beyond saying that it is spectacularly beautiful along the East Lyn river, in Lyn Cleave, and in the so-called Valley of the Rocks W. of the town. The remote farms of Coffins Heanton and Ilkerton were Domesday manors. So, too, were East Lyn and West Lyn. At Lower East Lyn are the remains of the 17th century manor house of the Pophams.
The town of Lynton itself has little to commend it. It is almost entirely late Victorian and Edwardian. Nor is the church (St. Mary) any better. Apart from its 13th century tower, it has been rebuilt and enlarged so often that it is now a neat, dull Victorian.
Lynmouth is much more picturesque (in the proper sense of that word). It was "discovered" in the first decade of the 19th century when the Napoleonic Wars had closed the Continent to English visitors, two of the earliest visitors being Mr. Coutts the banker, and the Marchioness of Bute. Southey described it as "the finest spot, except Cintra and the Arrabida, that I ever saw". The Shellers stayed here for nine weeks between June and August 1812 in a cottage belonging to a Mrs. Hooper. Two "cottages" claim to be, and call themselves, Shelley's Cottage. The actual cottage was burnt in 1907 and partly rebuilt.(Daily Graphic, 30th April 1907; Daily Telegraph, 21st May 1907.) The first hotel was built in 1807, but most visitors stayed in "cottages" of which there are many attractive examples dating from the 1830s and 1840s when the town began to develop steadily. The quay and pier were built in the 18th century for the herring fishery, which was once important, and a machicolated tower at the end added early in the 19th century by General Rawdon in imitation of the towers on the Rhine. By 1856 there were three hotels at Lynton, and Murray's Handbook in that year warns the visitor that "telescopes are employed at the rival houses for the prompt discovery of the approaching traveller. He had better, therefore, determine before-hand on his inn, or he may become a bone of contention to a triad of post-boys, who wait with additional horses at the bottom of the hill to drag the carriage to its destination." Sir George Newnes, the publisher, lived at Lynton for many years and gave to the town the cliff-railway which makes the steep ascent from the shore up to Lynton town.
On the night of 15-16 August 1952, Lynmouth was overwhelmed by floods arising from torrential rain on Exmoor, and suffered great damage. 31 people lost their lives, 93 houses were destroyed or so damaged as to call for subsequent demolition, and 28 bridges in the district destroyed or damaged. Among the casualties was General Rawdon's tower.
Lee Abbey, now a hotel, is a misnomer. For centuries it was a farmhouse, glorified into a small manor house when Hugh Wichehalse of Barnstaple removed his family here in 1628 away from the plague and the uncongenial party strife of his native town. It remained the seat of the Wichehalses until 1713, when they lost their estates. The present house was built about 1850 and then christened Lee Abbey.
