Cornworthy is located within South Hams local authority area. Historically it formed part of Coleridge Hundred. It falls within Totnes 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 468 in 1801 329 in 1901 . Figures for other years are available on the local studies website. In 1641/2 155 adult males signed the Protestation returns.

A parish history file is held in Totnes 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 Cornworthy 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 127/2 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 127NW
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SX826556. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SX85NW, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Outdoor Leisure 20, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 202. Geological sheet 350 also covers the area.

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

CORNWORTHY is one of the beautiful Dartside parishes. The parish church (St. Peter) is mainly a 15th century building. It has a late Norman font, and a fairly good early 15th century rood-screen. But the interior has all the feeling of the Georgian age, with its box-pews, pulpit and canopy, altar-piece, and windows of clear glass. A licence in the Exeter Faculty Books shows that it was entirely refitted in 1788, and it is now one of the most delightful church interiors in Devon, having entirely escaped the Victorian restorers. It is, however, now closed (1951) for public worship and awaiting urgent structural repairs. There is a good canopied tomb of Sir Thomas Harris, sergeant-at-law, in his lawyer's robes (1610), and Elizabeth his wife. The Rev. Charles Barter was vicar here for 71 years (1775-1846), the longest tenure of a Devonshire living that is known.

About 1.5 m. W. of the village are the remains of an Augustinian nunnery, founded between 1205 and 1238. A 14th century gatehouse is all that survives. Allaleigh, now a farm, was the ancestral freehold of the famous Hawley family of Dartmouth.