Plympton St Mary is located within Plymouth local authority area. Historically it formed part of Plympton Hundred. It falls within Plympton 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 1562 in 1801 3837 in 1901 . Figures for other years are available on the local studies website. In the valuation of 1334 it was assessed at £04/06/08. The lay subsidy of 1524 valued the community at £46/11/03. In 1641/2 533 adult males signed the Protestation returns. It is recorded as a borough from 1225 and was incorporated in 1602. It had parliamentary representation from 1295-1832. The community had a grammar school from 1658. Incorporated in Plymouth. A market is recorded from 14c.-1985.

A parish history file is held in Ivybridge 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 Plympton St Mary 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 124/2,3 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 124NW,NE
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SX540566. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SX55NW,NE, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Outdoor Leisure 20, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 201. Geological sheet 349 also covers the area.

Illustrations: The image below is of Plympton St Mary 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:

PLYMPTON ST. MARY is a vast parish, covering well over 10,000 acres, with an ancient village on the main road from Plymouth to Exeter. To-day the village is almost a suburb of Plymouth, and has doubled its numbers since 1900.

An Augustinian priory was founded at Plympton St. Mary in 1121, but a collegiate church of St. Peter and St. Paul had existed here from the time of Alfred. Plympton priory became the second richest monastery in Devon and Cornwall, exceeded only by Tavistock Abbey, but scarcely a vestige of this great house remains to-day. Such small fragments as remain lie to the S. of Plympton Parish Church. Among its property was the site of Plymouth, a town which owes its origin to the priory.

Plympton church (St. Mary) stood in the churchyard of the conventual church: hence its comparative isolation from the village to-day. It now stands in a lawn-like churchyard, a handsome building of early 14th and 15th century date, built largely of granite. The granite tower (108 ft.) is notably good. Among the features of the interior are the Strode monuments (460, 1637), some ancient heraldic glass, the mutilated canopied tomb of a Courtenay (15th century, the handsome triple sedilia and piscina in the chancel, and the good modern parclose screens.

The fertile countryside of Plympton had no fewer than thirteen lesser Domesday manors besides the royal manor. All these ancient estates survive to-day (except the lost Walford), most as farmhouses, some as country houses. The Domesday manors were Baccamoor, Battisford, Bickford Town, Challonsleigh, Elfordleigh, Hemerdon, Holland, Langage, Loughtor Mills, Torridge, Woodford, Walford (lost), and Yealmpstone. Sparkwell appears by 1167, Saltram by 1249, Boringdon by 1279, Newnham by 1292.

Boringdon came to the Parkers in the time of Elizabeth. They rebuilt it on a substantial scale and made it their principal residence until they moved to Saltram after 1712. The house has been half-demolished, but there are considerable remains of the Elizabethan house, including the great hall.

Saltram, on a fine site overlooking the Plym estuary, is the largest house in Devon. In the reign of Charles I it was the seat of Sir James Bagg of Plymouth, and was then a substantial Tudor mansion. John Parker married Lady Catherine Powlett and it was they who built Saltram much as we see it to-day: a house of George II's time. It has been altered and added to three or four times, and is now rich in all that the 18th century architects and craftsmen could effect. (Country Life, 59 (1926), 160-170; Tourist's Companion to Plymouth, etc., 289) In 1768 the lower rooms were superbly decorated by Adam, notably the saloon and the dining- room. The former is a double cube, and is said by Polwhele to have cost at least £I 0,000. The ceilings of these rooms were painted by Zucchi. Among the art treasures of this great house, the collection of English and French furniture, and the pictures, are equally out- standing. The furniture includes a superb writing table which formerly belonged to Louis XIV. The pictures are undoubtedly the finest collection in Devon. They include a considerable number of the works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was a friend of the Parkers and often stayed at Saltram, and the fine Italian pictures collected from 1751 onwards on the advice of Reynolds. Saltram is one of the three great houses still kept up in Devon. The other two are Powderham (the Earl of Devon) and Castle Hill (Earl Fortescue).

Newnham Park is the seat of the Strodes, who originated at Strode in Ermington, and moved to Newnham in the 15th century Their old house is now a farmhouse (Old Newnham) with many traces of the former "mansion," but about 1700 they built their present house in a large park.

On the NE. side of the parish, on the high foothills of the Moor, are extensive china-clay works. The scenery of the parish is beautiful and varied, especially in the wooded valley of the Plym. Plym Bridge is the most interesting and picturesque on the Plym. A bridge existed here as early as 1238, on the important main road from Tavistock to Plympton.