Moretonhampstead
Moretonhampstead is located within Teignbridge local authority area. Historically it formed part of Teignbridge Hundred. It falls within Moretonhampstead 2 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 1768 in 1801 1527 in 1901 . Figures for other years are available on the local studies website. In the valuation of 1334 it was assessed at £01/18/06. The lay subsidy of 1524 valued the community at £10/16/04. In 1641/2 411 adult males signed the Protestation returns. It is recorded as a borough from 1640. A turnpike was established in 1772. A market is recorded from 14c.-1935.
A parish history file is held in Moretonhampstead 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 Moretonhampstead 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 90/7,11 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 90NE,90SE
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SX753861. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SX78NE, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Outdoor Leisure 28, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 191. Geological sheet 324 also covers the area.
Illustrations: The image below is of Moretonhampstead as included in the Library's Illustrations collection Other images can be searched for on the local studies catalogue.
A fair is known from: 14c.-1822. [It is intended to include the local section from The glove is up! Devon's historic fairs, by Tricia Gerrish, by kind permission of the author].
Extract from Devon by W.G.Hoskins (1954), included by kind permission of the copyright holder:
MORETONHAMPSTEAD is a small market town on the edge of Dartmoor, originally called simply Morton, "moor farm." On Mardon Down, NE. of the town, the hills rise to 1,170 ft. In the NW. of the parish, Cranbrook Castle (1,103 ft.) is an impressive Iron Age hill-fort (1st century B.C.), commanding the deep gorge of the wooded Teign valley, and looking across to its companion Prestonbury Castle, on the N. side of the valley. Wooston Castle, about 2 m. E. of Cranbrook, is an earthwork of similar age and type.
Wray Barton, in the beautiful valley of the Wray Brook below the town, was a Domesday manor, and became a "mansion." The present house is mostly Tudor. The farmstead of Lowton, W. of the town, was also recorded in Domesday. At Great Doccombe, beside the hilly road to Exeter, are the remains of another medieval mansion.
Moretonhampstead church (St. Andrew) is almost entirely a 15th early 16th century structure, one of the most spacious and impressive of the granite churches. The W. tower is granite Gothic at its finest-almost megalithic. We know that it was under construction in 1418. (Reg. Stafford, 420) The almshouses (dated 1637) are another delightful little building in granite (plate 39).
George Parker Bidder (1806-78), the famous "calculating boy," was born here, but his birthplace was destroyed by fire in 1926. He became a civil engineer, was associated with Robert Stephenson in the London and Birmingham railway project (1834), helped to found the Electric Telegraph Company, and constructed the Victoria Docks, London.
