Lustleigh is located within Teignbridge local authority area. Historically it formed part of Teignbridge Hundred. It falls within Moretonhampstead 2 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 246 in 1801 394 in 1901 . Figures for other years are available on the local studies website. In 1641/2 53 adult males signed the Protestation returns.

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 Lustleigh 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 100/4,100/8 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 100NE
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SX784812. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SX78SE, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Explorer 031, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 191. Geological sheet 339 also covers the area.

Illustrations: The image below is of Lustleigh 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:

LUSTLEIGH is a picturesque village with a good deal of excellent domestic building in granite of 16th to 18th century date (plate 38), and also some "olde worlde" fabrications that followed the "discovery" of the village. The moorland scenery W. of the village is locally famous, especially at Lustleigh Cleave overhanging the beautiful little river Bovey. Becka Falls, also a famous beauty spot, are near by on the Becka Brook, though actually in Manaton parish.

The church (St. John the Baptist) is an attractive and interesting building, ranging in date from the 13th century to the early 16th. In the S. transept is the effigy of Sir William Prouz (1329), and in the N. aisle wall two other effigies, probably also Prouzes though sometimes erroneously called Dinharns. (Hamilton Rogers, Effigies and Monuments of Devon. The rood-screen is unique, being almost certainly a post-Reformation and coarse copy of the fine screen at Bridford. It bears the pomegranate badge of Katherine of Aragon, but a date in Mary's reign (1553-8) has been suggested for it.

The Rev. William Davy (1743-1826) was for many years curate of Lustleigh, and here he printed, at the rectory and on a printing-press constructed by himself, the 26 unreadable volumes of his System of Divinity, besides six volumes of his sermons on which he lost £100.

Just across the stream from Lustleigh village (though in Bovey Tracey parish) is Wreyland, where Cecil Torr wrote his delightful three volumes of Small Talk at Wreyland, of gossip and talk about this bit of Devonshire countryside during the space of a hundred years or so.