Brixton is located within South Hams local authority area. Historically it formed part of Plympton Hundred. It falls within Plympton 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 635 in 1801 652 in 1901 . Figures for other years are available on the local studies website.

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 Brixton 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 124/15 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 124SE
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SX554521. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SX55SE, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Outdoor Leisure 20, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 202. Geological sheet 349 also covers the area.

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

BRIXTON has a late 15th century church (St. Mary), much restored in 1887 and 1894. Near it is a grove of elms, first planted in 1677 by Edward Fortescue of Spriddlestone, to be felled and sold for the relief of the poor of the parish. Immediately N. of the church is a late medieval house, probably the former parsonage or church-house. SW. of the church is a 16th century house, and E. and W. a number of attractive cottages.

The parish contains a number of interesting "mansions." Apart from Brixton itself, no fewer than seven other estates are mentioned in Domesday Book. These are Chittleburn, Halwell, Hareston, Sherford, Spriddlestone, Winston, and Wollaton. At Higher Hareston is a very attractive early Tudor house with a good porch, and remains of a chapel licensed in 1408. Spriddlestone was the home of one of the numerous branches of the great Fortescue family from about 1355 to 1785. They built a large quadrangular house here (now gone)temp. Henry VI and enlarged it in Elizabethan times.