The parish church is dedicated to St Mary, and sits on a hill, for which the Old English word was "dun"; this provides the origin of the village and parish name.[2] The lands of the current civil parish of Down St Mary, in addition to some outlying lands, were given as gift of three hides by King Edgar the Peaceful to a minister named Ælfhere in 974.[3] Much of the borders of this gift, such those defined by the River Yeo and Knighty Brook, and the A3072,[4] remain the borders of the parish.[5] The Domesday Book of 1086 mentions three places within the boundaries of the modern civil parish: the village itself, then owned partially by Buckfast Abbey and partially by the King; Wolfin, an extant farmstead then owned by Walter de Claville; and Chaffcombe, an extant hamlet recorded then as having no inhabitants. Of the 39 recorded households, 11 were those of slaves.
As of 2026, the most recent parish council election (2024) was unopposed and left vacancies, which were then filled by co-option (election by existing councillors).[8] The parish sits in the Upper Yeo and Taw ward for the purposes of Mid Devon district council elections, and has been represented by two Liberal Democrat district councillors since 2024. For Devon County Council elections it sits in the Creedy Taw and Mid Exe ward, which was created for the 2017 election and since 2025 has been represented by a Liberal Democrat councillor. Nationally, the parish has lain since 2010 in the parliamentary constituency of Central Devon, representative by a ConservativeMP, Mel Stride.
Geography
The village is approximately 21 km (13 mi) north-west of Exeter, and approximately 266 km (165 mi) south-west of London. It sits on one of several hills in an undulating agricultural landscape. Several small watercourses bound and penetrate the parish, but none cross it. The valleys associated with the watercourses set a minimum elevation around 90 m; the hilltops vary in elevation from a little over 100 m, to 176 m. Alluvial deposits of silt, clay and gravel are present due to the watercourses. In some areas these deposits are known to be between about 11 and 125 thousand years old; in others they are only known to have been laid down at some point between 2.5 million years ago and the present. The bedrock of the southern parish border is substantially breccia from the Bow breccia formation, created in the Permian, approximately 300 to 250 million years ago; the bedrock throughout the rest of the parish is about 10–20 million years older, from the CarboniferousBude formation, and comprises mixed strips of mudstone and siltstone, and sandstone. All of the bedrock of the parish was formed underwater.[9] The bedrock imparts a characteristic red colour to the soil; the Bow breccia formation forms part of the Devon Redlands.
As of 2022, land use data is available at the level of lower Layer Super Output Area; Down St Mary parish forms the easternmost part of an area also including the parishes of Wembworthy, Brushford, Eggesford, Coldridge, Nymet Rowland, and Zeal Monachorum. 82% of this area is used for agriculture, 12% is forest, land and open water, and 3% is taken up by transport and utilities infrastructure. Residential use occupies less than 1%.[10]
↑Finberg, H. P. R. (1960), A supplement to The Early Charters of Devon and Cornwall, Department of English Local History Occasional Papers, vol.13, Hertfordshire, UK: Leicester University Press, pp.27–29, retrieved 14 December 2024
↑Ross, J. (2013). "Down St Mary Parish"(PDF). Mid Devon District Council. Retrieved 25 October 2026.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
