Berrynarbor is located within North Devon local authority area. Historically it formed part of Braunton 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 532 in 1801 589 in 1901 . Figures for other years are available on the local studies website. In 1641/2 162 adult males signed the Protestation returns.

A parish history file is held in Combe Martin 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 Berrynarbor 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 5/2 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 5NW
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SS560468. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SS54NE, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Explorer 139, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 180. Geological sheet 277 also covers the area.

Illustrations: The image below is of Berrynarbor as included in the Library's Etched on Devon's memory website. 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:

BERRYNARBOR The manor house of the Berrys, built c. 1480, still stands near the church, though the porch and one wing have been demolished. The porch and some elaborate carved work are now at Westaway, near Barnstaple. The church (St. Peter) is largely a 15th century building, but there are considerable remains of the 12th and 13th century The Beer stone arcade (c.1500-10) has rather coarse detail in its carved capitals Presumably this stone was brought all around the coast by sea from the East Devon quarry. The tower, built of the local red sandstone about 1480, is one of the grandest in N. Devon; its N. face is perhaps the best side, with the turreted staircase.

John Jewel (1522-71), bishop of Salisbury and author of the famous Apologia pro Ecclesia Anglicana (1562), which Queen Elizabeth ordered to be read in every church in her kingdom, was born at Bowden, a farmhouse in this parish. The present farmhouse, which retains an interesting 15th century screen, may well be the very one in which Jewel was born. His great opponent, Thomas Harding (1516-72), who abandoned protestantism and retired to Louvain in the reign of Elizabeth, was born in the neighbouring parish of Combe Martin.

Watermouth Castle, a Gothic house in a lovely park, was built about 1825. East Hagginton was a Domesday manor.