Buckland Brewer is located within Torridge local authority area. Historically it formed part of Shebbear Hundred. It falls within Hartland 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 872 in 1801 644 in 1901 . Figures for other years are available on the local studies website. The lay subsidy of 1524 valued the community at £20/14/10. In 1641/2 215 adult males signed the Protestation returns. A market is recorded from 14 cent..

A parish history file is held in Bideford 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 Buckland Brewer 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 29/1,5 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 29NW
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SS419208. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SS42SW, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Explorer 126, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 180. Geological sheet 307 also covers the area.
A fair is known from: 14 cent.. [It is intended to include the local section from The glove is up! Devon's historic fairs, by Tricia Gerrish, by kind permission of the author].

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

BUCKLAND BREWER is a sizeable village on a hill-top, visible from many miles away. The church has a curious double dedication to St. Mary and St. Benedict, but except for the fine tower, rebuilt in 1399 after being struck by lightning, is of little interest. It was rebuilt in 1879-80. A good Norman doorway (c. 1160) has, however, survived. In the Orleigh chapel are monuments to the Dennises of Orleigh (1641) and their successors, the Davies (1709-10). There is also an interesting monument to Philip Vening (1658), similar in style to that of John Downe at Instow (1640). The Church Room, in the churchyard, is traditionally stated to have been a chapel of St. Stephen.

Orleigh was part of the original endowment of Tavistock abbey c. 974, but was granted by the abbey to the Dennis family before 1200. Anthony Dennis (d. 1641) left no male heir, and in 1684 Orleigh was sold to John Davie, a successful merchant of Bideford. John Davie and his son Joseph between them altered and enlarged the house between 1684 and 1721, and gave it its present form; but the hall, with porch and room over, are part of the earlier house, which was rebuilt about 1580. Galsworthy, now a farmhouse of perhaps early 17th century date, was a Domesday manor. It is the fons et origo of the family of John Galsworthy, the novelist. (Polwele D.S. 95 -102.) Vielstone was a medieval manor, and retains traces of its former status in the house.