Cheriton Fitzpaine is located within Mid Devon local authority area. Historically it formed part of West Budleigh Hundred. It falls within Cadbury 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 884 in 1801 678 in 1901 . Figures for other years are available on the local studies website. In 1641/2 200 adult males signed the Protestation returns.

A parish history file is held in Cheriton Fitzpaine 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 Cheriton Fitzpaine 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 55/8 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 55NE
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SS870062. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SS80NE, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Explorer 114, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 191. Geological sheet 310 also covers the area.

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

CHERITON FITZPAINE is a large village in unspoilt and beautiful country. Its name means "church-town" and indicates a church in pre- Conquest times. The Fitzpaines held the manor in the 13th century. Of the farms in the parish, Chilton, Coddiford, Coombe Barton, and Lower Dunscombe appear as small estates in Domes-day.

The church (St. Matthew) (So Kelly, 1935; but, Oliver, Mon., 446, leaves the dedication blank.) is entirely a 15th century building, spacious and light. The N. and S. arcades of Beer stone have good carved capitals of the Devon type; the original ceiled wagon roofs remain, with especially good bosses in the N. aisle; the royal arms are dated 1665. There are a number of finely incised floor-slabs (with coats-of-arms) mainly to the Moores of Upcott, and a particularly fine slab to Susanna Harris (1666). Upcott Barton, about It m. N. of the church, was the seat of the Upcotts in Henry Ill's time. By the early 15th century it had come to Nicholas Radford, a lawyer, who was murdered in 1455 by Sir Thomas Courtenay, son of the Earl of Devon, and a band of followers. In Henry VIII's time Upcott belonged to the Courtenays and became the seat of a younger branch of that family. It is now a farmhouse, but retains considerable traces of its former status of "mansion."