Winkleigh
Winkleigh is located within Mid Devon local authority area. Historically it formed part of Winkleigh Hundred. It falls within Chulmleigh 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 1214 in 1801 1079 in 1901 . Figures for other years are available on the local studies website. In the valuation of 1334 it was assessed at £04/04/11. The lay subsidy of 1524 valued the community at £11/19/06. In 1641/2 274 adult males signed the Protestation returns. It is recorded as a borough from 1250.
A parish history file is held in Okehampton 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 Winkleigh 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 53/2 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 53SW
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SS632081. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SS60NW, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Explorer 113, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 191. Geological sheet 309 also covers the area.
A fair is known from: 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:
WINKLEIGH is an ancient village on a lofty hill. It was one of the nucleated villages founded in the early days of the Saxon occupation of Devon, and gave its name to a hundred.
Court Castle seems to have been a small Norman castle-site. At the SW' end of Castle Street is a smaller mount known as Croft Castle, which probably served a similar purpose. The buildings may have been fortified manor houses rather than true castles.
Winkleigh had the only park recorded in the Devon Domesday. It also had a 500-acre wood of which the present Winkleigh Wood is probably a remnant.
At some unknown date, Winkleigh acquired a fair and a market and became one of the numerous seignorial boroughs of Devon. Its borough court sat until 1848. The hamlet of Hollocombe, 2 1.5 m. N., also had a medieval market and fair.
Winkleigh remained an important local centre for its remote district until late Victorian times. It reached its maximum size in the 1840s, and thereafter began to decline. By 1931 it was little more than half the size it had been ninety years earlier.
Winkleigh village contains few houses of any individual interest: it is mostly the typical Devon market town, stucco and rough cast. The church (All Saints) is a 15th century building, over- restored in 1873 at great cost. It retains, however, its richly carved wagon roofs, a good 15th century font, and some medieval glass in the W. window of the S. transept. Loosedon was a Domesday manor, and later a medieval mansion.
Court Barton was the seat of the Keynes manor, where their manor courts were held. Southcott was the seat of the Southcotts, probably from the 12th century onwards, from whom "a great kindred" sprang and dispersed all over the county. The present farmhouse shows some traces of the former mansion, which had a chapel in 1427.
