Bridgerule is located within Torridge local authority area. Historically it formed part of Black Torrington Hundred. It falls within Holsworthy 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 332 in 1801 375 in 1901 . Figures for other years are available on the local studies website.In 1641/2 53 adult males signed the Protestation returns.

A parish history file is held in Holsworthy 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 Bridgerule 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 61/3 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 61NE
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SS274029. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SS20SE, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Explorer 111, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 190. Geological sheet 323 also covers the area.

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

BRIDGERULE was called Brige in Domesday Book, after the bridge over the Tamar here. It has a 1st century church (St. Bridget) with an elegant granite S. arcade, a fine tower, and good wagon-roofs, especially that in the S. aisle which has carved bosses. A Norman font and stoup survive from the 12th century church. The font is of the simplest type: a bowl hollowed out of a block of granite. The church seems originally to have been cruciform in plan, with N. and S. transepts: Tackbear was a Domesday manor, and a "mansion", in the 16th to 18th centuries.