Kingsbridge is located within South Hams local authority area. Historically it formed part of Stanborough Hundred. It falls within Woodleigh 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 1117 in 1801 1413 in 1901 . Figures for other years are available on the local studies website. In the valuation of 1334 it was assessed at £03/10/00. The lay subsidy of 1524 valued the community at £19/06/02. In 1641/2 151 adult males signed the Protestation returns. It is recorded as a borough from 1220. A turnpike was established in 1759. The community had a grammar school from 1689. A market is recorded from 14c.-1985.

A parish history file is held in Kingsbridge 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 Kingsbridge 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 132/15,136/3 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 132SE,136NE
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SX735445. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SX74SW, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Outdoor Leisure 20, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 202. Geological sheet 355 also covers the area.

Illustrations: The image below is of Kingsbridge 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:

KINGSBRIDGE is a small town on a steep hill which rises from the head of a beautiful, many-branched estuary. There was a bridge here in the l0th century (referred to in a charter of 962) linking two large royal estates-AIvington to the W. and Chillington to the E.: hence known as " King's bridge." The abbot of Buckfast obtained a market here in 1219, and the new town began to grow. By 1238 it was a borough, though it was never incorporated in later times. The neighbouring manor of Dodbrooke, now joined to Kingsbridge, and part of it for civil purposes, was granted a market in 1257 and reckoned to be a borough by 1319.(D.A. 45 (1913),145; D.C.N.Q. 24 (1951), 205,206) But it never grew to any size: in 1801 it had only 608 people.

Kingsbridge contains much good 18th to19th century building. In the Fore Street are several modest late Georgian houses and inns. The Shambles (or Market Arcade) was rebuilt in 1796. It now extends over the pavement in six bays with granite piers, five of which are Elizabethan (1586). The Grammar School, founded and built by Thomas Crispin in 1670, contains a full-length portrait of him. On the Promenade is Pindar Lodge, the birthplace of John Wolcot (1738-1819), the satirist and poet who wrote under the name of Peter Pindar. He was educated at Kingsbridge Grammar School. His birthplace was largely rebuilt about 1800. William Cookworthy (1705-80), who discovered "china clay" in England and produced the first true English porcelain, was also born in Kingsbridge.

Kingsbridge church (St. Edmund) is mainly a 13th century building, enlarged by the addition of aisles in the 15th. There is a Flaxman monument to the wife of Major Hawkins, and in the chancel a fine miserere. Dodbrooke consists chiefly of one street, at the top of which is the uninteresting church of St. Thomas Becket. This is mostly 15th century in date, too much restored. It has a fine rood-screen and parclose screen. Well House has some 16th century work in a mainly Georgian house. Unlike most small Devon market towns, Dodbrooke grew throughout the 19th century. By the 1880s it had twice as many people as in 1808 complete reversal of the usual trend. It had an active coasting trade, a shipbuilding yard, a tannery, two breweries, an agricultural implement works, and a great cattle market every month: a true local community solidly founded on its own resources and needs. The railway came in 1893, and almost immediately the population began to fall, as it did at Kingsbridge also. Since then they (particularly Kingsbridge) have risen to favour as a holiday centre, and have grown again.