Chulmleigh is located within North Devon local authority area. Historically it formed part of Witheridge Hundred. It falls within Chulmleigh 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 1333 in 1801 1158 in 1901 . Figures for other years are available on the local studies website. The lay subsidy of 1524 valued the community at £18/04/02. In 1641/2 264 adult males signed the Protestation returns. It is recorded as a borough from 1274. A market is recorded from 14c.-1822.

A parish history file is held in Chulmleigh 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 Chulmleigh 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 42/4 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 42NE
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SS687142. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SS61SE, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Explorer 127, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 180. Geological sheet 309 also covers the area.

Illustrations: The image below is of Chulmleigh as included in the Library's Etched on Devon's memory website. Other images can be searched for on the local studies catalogue.

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

CHULMLEIGH is a small decayed market-town, boldly situated on the top of a hill rising from the Little Dart River. It belonged to Baldwin the sheriff in 1086, passed to the Courtenays as part of the great honour of Okehampton before 1194, and remained in their hands until the attainder of Henry, Marquess of Exeter, in 1539.

Chulmleigh was made a borough by the Courtenays about 1253. It was a prosperous place throughout the 17th and 18th centuries., with a woollen industry, a good market, and three cattle fairs. It also stood on the main road from Exeter to Barnstaple and shared in the road traffic. The Barnstaple Inn is dated 1633, and there is much other decent old building in the town. The woollen industry had practically gone by 1800, but the cattle fairs, markets and road traffic kept the town relatively prosperous until about 1850. Since then it has hardly moved. The causes of the decline were the making of the new turnpike road along the Taw valley (c. 1830) which took away a good deal of the wagon traffic from the old hill-road through the town, and the opening of the North Devon railway in 1854 along the same valley, which led to the setting up of new sheep and cattle markets at Eggesford and South Molton Road stations.

The parish church (St. Mary Magdalen) was formerly a collegiate church, with seven prebends founded at an un- known date. It was entirely rebuilt in the 15th cent., and has a very fine W. tower, restored in 1881. The interior is spacious, with lofty nave arcades and good wagon roofs with carved bosses and angels on the wall-plates. The chancel was rebuilt, and four memorial windows inserted, in 1860. A fine rood- screen, in perfect condition, with its vaulting and cornices complete, extends across nave and aisles.

In the surrounding parish are a number of interesting houses. Stone Barton, in beautiful remote country 2 m. E. of the town, has substantial remains of an earthwork on a promontory above the farm. There is said to have been a castle here, and in Westcote's day a ruined heap of stones could be seen. It may have been a small Iron Age hill-fort adapted later to an early medieval castle or fortified house.

Garland, a remote farm in the N. of the parish, was the birthplace of John Garland, grammarian, poet, and alchemist, who studied at Oxford and Paris, was professor at Toulouse University 1229-31, and wrote treatises on grammar, minerals, counterpoint, and plain-song.

Colleton Barton is architecturally the most interesting and attractive house in the parish. The present house was built largely by Humphrey Bury about 1612. This date appears in the dining- room. The gatehouse, with the chapel above it, remains from the medieval house. The chapel, dedicated to St. Edmund the Bishop, was first licensed in 1381. This is the period of the gate-house, which probably gave access to a quadrangle round which the medieval house lay. The present house is E- shaped, the W. wing containing the Hall and drawing-room. There are fine decorated plaster ceilings of early I 7th century date in the Hall, drawing-room and dining-room. The drawing-room is panelled with carved oak, adorned with the coats-of-arms of the Burys and allied families.