Yarnscombe is located within Torridge local authority area. Historically it formed part of Hartland Hundred. It falls within Torrington 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 358 in 1801 273 in 1901 . Figures for other years are available on the local studies website.

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 Yarnscombe 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 20/11,15 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 20SE
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SS561236. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SS52SE, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Explorer 127, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 180. Geological sheet 309 also covers the area.

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

YARNSCOMBE Church (St. Andrew) is entirely 15th century and is pleasant but of no great interest. Some medieval tiles and glass remain in the S. aisle. The altar-tomb on the N. side of the chancel is that of John or Nicholas Cockworthy and his wife (15th century).

Their estate passed by marriage to a branch of the Trevelyans before 1522, who lived in some style at Court Barton, now a farmhouse.

Delley was a Saxon estate, and later the site of a medieval mansion of which some traces remain in a modernised house. Langley Barton was a home of the Pollards for some centuries. It belonged to Richard Pollard in Richard II's time. A Pollard of Langley was usher to Queen Elizabeth and James I. He married a sister of " Bess of Hardwick," Countess of Shrewsbury. The present house is externally a good 18th century farmhouse, but contains traces of older work.