Peter Tavy
Peter Tavy is located within West Devon local authority area. Historically it formed part of Roborough 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 291 in 1801 293 in 1901 . Figures for other years are available on the local studies website. In 1641/2 98 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 Peter Tavy 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 98/13 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 98SW
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SX514776. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SX57NW, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Outdoor Leisure 28, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 201. Geological sheet 338 also covers the area.
Illustrations: The image below is of Peter Tavy as included in the Library's illustrations catalogue. 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:
PETERTAVY church (St. Peter) is mainly a building of c. 1500, abominably restored. Portions of the medieval rood-screen, which was chopped up at the "restoration," are fastened to a wall. The remains of a fine carved pew, also chopped up, were put across the tower arch. There are, however, several interesting secular buildings in the village and outlying parts of the parish. The Petertavy Inn is probably early 17th century Coxtor is a good example of a moorland yeoman's dwelling of the same date. Willsworthy, far up the infant Tavy, was a Saxon farInStead, held by Siward in 1066. It had a chapel in medieval times. It is now a somewhat altered 16th century farmhouse. Wapsworthy, recorded in 1230, has a ruined 16th century farmstead. Bagga Tor, recorded in 1238, is a remote moorland farmstead built into the side of a hill, of considerable interest to the student of English peasant building. Nat Tor (1340) is another primitive farmstead. At Cudlipptown, behind Edgecombe Farm, a 15th century farmstead, now abandoned as a dwelling, survives largely intact.
The moorland in the parish is thickly sprinkled with hut-circles, cairns, stone rows and circles, and other Bronze Age remains, which can be best located on the 2½-inch maps (sheets 20/57, 20/58). On Standon Down is a remarkable collection of more than 70 hut-circles representing an unenclosed Bronze Age village, one of the most important sites on the Moor. It lies at the S. end of Tavy Cleave, a romantically beautiful gorge where the Tavy breaks out of the Moor. One must beware of the military's firing activities around here, but adequate notice is given. The visitor should not be deterred from seeing this most interesting and beautiful place. Along the Tavy near Cudlipptown are disused tin and copper mines.
