Butterleigh is located within Mid Devon local authority area. Historically it formed part of Cliston Hundred. It falls within Cullompton 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 125 in 1801 83 in 1901 . Figures for other years are available on the local studies website. In 1641/2 35 adult males signed the Protestation returns.

A parish history file is held in Tiverton 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 Butterleigh 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 45/16,56/4 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 45SE,56NE
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SS975081. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SS90NE, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Explorer 114, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 192. Geological sheet 310 also covers the area.

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

BUTTERLEIGH is a small parish with a poor screen and a mural monument in remote, hilly country. Between 1161 and 1184 Brian de Boterlegh, lord the manor, gave the church to St. Nicholas's priory at Exeter. The church was then newly built and the parish created at the same time. The font, a plain round bowl, dates from this time: it is the only relic of the Norman church, which was entirely rebuilt early in the 14th century and dedicated by Bishop Stapeldon in 1319. Early in the 17th century it underwent a further reconstruction by Peter Muden, a Dutch doctor of medicine who married a daughter of the Courtenays of Molland in 1600. He seems to have rebuilt the tower and probably the curious, unsatisfactory N. arcade. The church was badly restored in 1861. The tower retains its three pre-Reformation and bells in their original cages or frames.