Yarcombe is located within East Devon local authority area. Historically it formed part of Axminster Hundred. It falls within Honiton Vol 1 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 740 in 1801 561 in 1901 . Figures for other years are available on the local studies website. The lay subsidy of 1524 valued the community at £10/01/04.

A parish history file is held in Honiton 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 Yarcombe 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 48/15 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 48SE
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is ST245082. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet ST20NW, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Explorer 029, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 193. Geological sheet 311 also covers the area.

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

YARCOMBE enclosed by the bleak plateau of the Blackdown Hills, was very remote until the new main road from Honiton to Chard was cut early in the 19th century. The church (St. John the Baptist) is mostly a 15th century structure, with a few earlier traces, badly restored in 1889-91, when the chancel was rebuilt.

The manor was acquired by Sir Francis Drake whose descendants still own it. Sheafhayne House, reputedly the manor house, is an Elizabethan building, enlarged and modernised in 1925. Dennington, now a farmhouse, was a Domesday manor. The Yarcombe Inn was almost certainly the Church House at one time.