Weare Giffard is located within Torridge local authority area. Historically it formed part of Shebbear Hundred. It falls within Hartland 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 419 in 1801 317 in 1901 . Figures for other years are available on the local studies website. In 1641/2 87 adult males signed the Protestation returns.

A parish history file is held in Torrington 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 Weare Giffard 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 29/3 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 29NE
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SS477220. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SS42SE, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Explorer 139, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 180. Geological sheet 307 also covers the area.

Illustrations: The image below is of Weare Giffard 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:

WEAR GIFFARD (pron. Jifford) lies in the wooded Torridge valley and makes a highly attractive picture with its 15th century manor house, built by the Fortescues when they acquired the estate in 1454. The wall of the outer courtyard was partly demolished in the Civil War, but the gatehouse remains. The great hall (with a splendid hammerbeam roof) and other rooms of the original house survive. Details of the masonry and of the woodwork confirm the tradition that the house was rebuilt by Martin Fortescue (d. 1472) and finished in the time of his son John. The panelling of the hall is local work of the time of Henry VIII. Other rooms contain fine woodwork of Tudor and Jacobean date.

Nearby is the parish church (Holy Trinity), which has a 14th century nave and chancel, and a S. aisle and W. tower added in the 15th century. The chancel has a very fine 15th century roof, possibly done by the craftsmen who built the hall roof in the manor house. The contents of the church are varied and interesting. There are some excellent heraldic bench-ends; some 1st century glass (in the E. window of the S. aisle especially); a good medieval wall painting in the S. aisle, supposed to represent the martyrdom of St. Edmund; and two 13th century Giffard effigies. There are also Fortescue monuments, including a fine one to Hugh Fortescue and his wife (1661). Huxhill and Little Weare were Domesday manors.