Bratton Fleming 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 406 in 1801 511 in 1901 . Figures for other years are available on the local studies website.In 1641/2 129 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 Bratton Fleming 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 10/10 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 10SW
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SS643377. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SS63NW, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Outdoor Leisure 09, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 180. Geological sheet 293 also covers the area.

Extract from Devon by W.G.Hoskins (1954), included by kind permission of the copyright holder:

BRATTON FLEMING is a large village along one street which climbs steadily up the foothills of Exmoor. The Flemings had their seat at Chimwell, now a farmhouse called Chumhill, which Risdon said was "one of the largest demesnes of this shire." Benton and Haxton were small Domesday manors. The great jurist Henry de Bracton was probably born at Bratton

Fleming, the first and greatest of the long line of Devon lawyers. (Round, E.H.R. 31 (1916), 586 ff.)

The church (St. Peter) is a Victorian rebuilding of 1855-61, of the worst kind, redeemed by one good monument (to Bartholomew Wortley). At Chelfham the old Lynton and Barnstaple Railway, now dismantled, crossed the valley by a fine viaduct of eight arches, 400 ft. long and 70 ft. above the roadway.