Heanton Punchardon is located within North Devon local authority area. Historically it formed part of Braunton Hundred. It falls within Barnstaple 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 418 in 1801 404 in 1901 . Figures for other years are available on the local studies website. In 1641/2 142 adult males signed the Protestation returns.

A parish history file is held in Braunton 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 Heanton Punchardon 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 8/16 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 8SE
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SS503356. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SS53NW, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Explorer 139, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 180. Geological sheet 293 also covers the area.

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

HEANTON PUNCHARDON lies on the seaward end of a sharp ridge, and commands very fine land and sea views. Chivenor, a 13th century settlement, is now the site of a large aerodrome, chosen because it was one of the few level stretches of land in N. Devon.

The church (St. Augustine) is finely sited on the end of the ridge. It is almost entirely 15th early 16th century in date, with a graceful W. tower. Plastered and whitened throughout, well kept and wholly charming, it is a most "atmospheric" country church. The furniture is mostly inoffensive Victorian deal. Many coloured mural monuments hang on the plastered walls like pictures, as indeed they are: portraits of a vanished society. The rood-screen was taken away at the "restoration" and put back at another. Its 19th century extension across the N. aisle is completely out of keeping with the old work. Beyond the screen, in the N. chancel aisle, are some interesting coloured mural monuments to the Bassets (who lived at Heanton Court) ranging in date from 1635 to 1686, and there are inscribed Basset slabs in the floor. The chancel is in excellent taste, with still more monuments and an elaborate canopied tomb, probably that of Richard Coffin (d. 1523) who desired in his will to be buried in Heanton church.

In the churchyard is the tomb of Edward Capern (1819-94), the so-called " Postman-poet," whom Landor oddly called "The Bums of Devon." Also buried in this beautiful churchyard are many airmen from the Dominions (Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), who were stationed at Chivenor during the war of 1939-45. Here, high up under a bright Attic sky, they look westwards down the placid Taw estuary as it opens silently out to the sea, homeward towards Canada where most of them belonged. Heanton Court, beside the Taw estuary, was the seat of a younger branch of the Bassets from the 15th century down to 1802. It is now a farmhouse.