Woolfardisworthy Bideford
Woolfardisworthy (Bideford) is located within Torridge local authority area. Historically it formed part of Hartland Hundred. It falls within Hartland 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 591 in 1801 648 in 1901 . Figures for other years are available on the local studies website. In 1641/2 117 adult males signed the Protestation returns.
A parish history file is held in Bideford 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 Woolfardisworthy (Bideford) 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 28/1 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 28NW
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SS332210. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SS32SW, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Explorer 126, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 190. Geological sheet 307 also covers the area.
Extract from Devon by W.G.Hoskins (1954), included by kind permission of the copyright holder:
WOOLFARDISWORTHY (pron. Woolsery), near Hartland, is a parish with much lonely marsh and moorland. The small village is rather untidy but at West Town is a pleasant group of old farmsteads, one of which is probably 16th century. There are many remote farms, of which Ashmansworthy and Almiston are mentioned in Domesday.
So also is Woolfardisworthy itself and the very attractive little fishing hamlet of Bucks Mills. This small settlement lived for centuries mainly by fishing, like Clovelly a little farther W. The parish church (dedication unknown) is interesting. It is mainly a 15th century rebuilding in the purplish local stone, but a fine late 12th century S. doorway has been preserved from an earlier building, together with a 13th century font. Several excellently carved bench-ends (c. 1500) survive, and a Jacobean altar-table. There are Prust memorials (17th to I8th century), a fine monumental effigy to Richard Cole (1614), and a monument to John Whitlocke, Esq., of Lincoln's Inn (1750).
