Bishop's Nympton is located within North Devon local authority area. Historically it formed part of Witheridge Hundred. It falls within South Molton 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 902 in 1801 893 in 1901 . Figures for other years are available on the local studies website. In 1641/2 191 adult males signed the Protestation returns.

A parish history file is held in South Molton 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 Bishop's Nympton 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 22/11 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 22SE
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SS759237. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SS72SE, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Explorer 127, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 180. Geological sheet 309 also covers the area.

Illustrations: The image below is of Bishop's Nympton 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:

BISHOP'S NYMPTON was an estate of the bishops of Exeter. The church (St. Mary) is entirely 15th or early 16th century in date, with a fine, well-proportioned tower. Restored in 1869 and 1877, the interior is Victorianised and unexciting. All the roofs have good bosses, especially the S. aisle. An altar-tomb on the N. side of the chancel without inscription is probably that of Sir Lewis Pollard (c. 1465-1450), kings sergeant in 1507, justice of the Common Pleas 1514-26, and one of the many eminent Devon lawyers to found a large estate. He lived at Grilstone in this parish, though he later bought a large estate in King's Nympton (q.v.) and made a park there. A window in the Pollard aisle formerly portrayed the judge with eleven sons kneeling behind him, and his wife with eleven daughters. About this Prince relates a pleasant tale: That his lady, glassing this window in her husband's absence at the Term in London, caused one child more than she then had to be set there; presuming, having had one and twenty already, and usually conceiving at her husband's coming home, that she should have another. Which, inserted in expectation, came to pass in reality." (Prince, Worthies of Devon, 641.)

There are some remains of the old house at Grilstone. Rawstone, Garliford and Hall are other farmhouses which were once the mansions of medieval freeholders and show some evidence of this origin. Whitechapel Barton was called Blaunchechapele in 1281, and Whitechapel in 1333, possibly from the colour of its stonework. The present house, which belonged to the Bassets for centuries, is an attractive building of 16th century date, with some early 18th century alterations.