Duvale is a historic estate in the parish of Bampton, Devon. It is situated on a narrow flat plain in the steep-sided valley of the River Exe, 1 1/2 miles south west of the town of Bampton and 5 miles north of Tiverton, also on the River Exe further downstream. The name, given by Pole (d.1635) as Deu Vale, is said by him to signify "a valley of water". It was until the nearby construction of the present busy A396 road a place of exceptional seclusion and tranquility. [1]
According to the Book of Fees [2] Duvale was one of the member manors of the feudal barony of Bampton, together with Hele(possibly Hele, Clayhanger, [3] Doddiscombe, Hockworthy, Havekareland (possibly Hawkerland, Colaton Raleigh) [4] Legh (Lea Barton, Hockworthy) [5]
Duvale was held by a branch of the ancient Dennis family [6] of Orleigh. Pole states Deu Vale to have been held in 1242 [7] by "Robert le Dennys". [8]
After the Dennis family, Duvale was held by a branch of the ancient Cruwys family [9] of Cruwys Morchard. Pole states Deu Vale to have been the dwelling in 1295 [10] of "John Crewes". [11]
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603) Duvale was purchased from the heir general of the Cruwys family by Thomas Tristram. [12] Writing in about 1630 Pole stated of the first Tristram of Duvale "whose posterity contynewe theire dwellinge in the same place". [13] An old mansion near Bampton Castle, called Castle Grove, was another nearby residence of the Tristram family, [14] who according to Lysons (1822) probably purchased it from the Bourchiers, feudal barons of Bampton. [15] In 1822 the site of Bampton Castle was the property of Robert Lucas, heir to the Tristram family. [16] A mural monument to John Tristram (1668-1722) exists in Bampton parish church, inscribed as follows:
On the escutcheon above are shown the arms of Tristram (Argent, three torteaux a label of three points azure a chief gules) impaling Stucley (Azure, three pears or) and Southcombe (Argent, a chevron ermines between three roses gules seeded or barbed vert
After the Tristram family, in 1796 Duvale was the joint property of the East India Company Captain Thomas Newte, author of Prospects and Observations on a Tour in England and Scotland, Natural, Oeconomical, and Literary (1791), [17] (a reworking and enlargement of A Tour in England and Scotland by an English Gentleman (1789) by William Thomson (1746–1817)), and the widow of his brother Rev. Mr. Newte, a classical scholar and poet. [18] [19] Thomas Newte married Anna Maria Raymond, one of the three daughters of the wealthy East India Company ship owner and banker Sir Charles Raymond, 1st Baronet (1713-1788), of Valentines, Ilford in Essex. Anna Maria predeceased her father leaving her married sisters the co-heiresses to Raymond's vast fortune. Raymond was himself born in Withycombe Raleigh, Devon. [20]
The Newte family had long been prominent in the area. Henry Newte The Elder was Town Clerk of Tiverton. Newte's son Henry NewteThe Younger (1609-1670), also served as Town Clerk of the town from 1625 to 1655 and was also twice its Mayor, and in 1660 the MP for Tiverton. [21]
John Newte (1656–1716), a Church of England clergyman was, for a period, appointed chaplain to King Charles II. However, Charles II converted to Catholicism on his deathbed in 1685. [22] Newte was educated at Blundell's School in Tiverton and became Rector of Tidcombe and Pitt portions (or quarters), Tiverton. He donated money for the building of Cove Chapel (near Duvale), founded Charity Schools in Tiverton and bequeathed land in Braunton [23] to Balliol College, Oxford to found an exhibition for a Blundell's scholar. Several monumental inscriptions to Newte family members survive in Tiverton parish church, including: [24]
In the summer of 1796 Rev John Swete (1752-1821) visited Duvale as part of his topographical tour of Devon. Although he described the house itself as "of antient date without any conspicuous marks of consequence", [27] he was highly impressed by the natural scenery of the location. He approached from Tiverton, via Cove, where he crossed the River Exe by the newly built Cove Bridge, and proceeded across Duvale Ford to Bampton. He described seeing "Duvale House", and described the surrounding scenery as: [28]
After the Newte tenure, in 1822 Duvale belonged to John Nicholas Fazakerley (1787-1852), MP [31] for Lincoln (1812–18), Great Grimsby (1818–20), Tavistock (1820), Lincoln again (1826-30) and City of Peterborough (1830–41).
In 1880 Duvale was let to Thomas I Yandle, a farmer previously the tenant of Hele Bridge, a farm on the Pixton Estate in Dulverton, who had fallen out with his landlord. [32] The Yandle family in 2014 is still prominent in the Devon and Somerset stag-hunting community. Thomas I had 3 daughters (including Clare, Kate and Amy (died aged 108 in about 1991), all of whom remained unmarried and kept house for various of their brothers and parents) and 5 sons who grew up at Duvale: Jack, the eldest, Dave, Perce, Ernest (born 1800) and Thomas II, who died of TB aged 14. He acquired tenancies of several further local farms, to one of which, Riphay Barton at Exebridge he himself moved in 1901, and established three of his sons as farmers: Jack at Chevithorn Barton, [33] part of the Amory family's estate at Knightshayes Court, and two brothers at Duvale. All the sons had been destined for farming, but Ernest Yandle (born 1880), the second youngest, considered of delicate health, at the age of 14 or 15 was sent away to Tiverton to learn the trade of draper which he continued at Exeter and Bristol until 1910, when he returned to Devon to farm and hunt. In 1918 Thomas I retired from farming, and Ernest took over the tenancy at Riphay, while Jack remained at Chevithorne and Dave and Perce in partnership at Duvale. Shortly before 1931 Percy Yandle purchased the freehold of Duvale, just before his brother Ernest purchased the freehold of Riphay, from the Pixton Estate of Henry Herbert, 6th Earl of Carnarvon (1898–1987). Percy Yandle lived with one of his unmarried sisters who kept house for him at Duvale. Duvale was sold by the Yandles in the 1960s [34]
In 1919 the 4 Yandle brothers took on mastership of the recently formed Tiverton Staghounds, and built kennels at Duvale. They retained the mastership until 1945. [35] The Tiverton Staghounds was established to control red deer numbers around that locality, which had previously been the responsibility of the long-established Devon and Somerset Staghounds, which found itself with too large a country to cope with effectively. Ernest's son is Tom Yandle (born 1935) of Riphay, chairman of the Devon and Somerset Staghounds, High Sheriff of Somerset and a committee member of both the National Trust and Exmoor National Park, who played a leading role in challenging the Labour government's ultimately successful proposal to ban hunting with hounds. [36]
Since 1991 the property has been renamed "Duvale Priory" and has been operated by Mark Underhill as a holiday letting business, and more recently as a licensed functions venue. [37] [38] The premises with converted former farm buildings and kennels has sleeping accommodation for a total of 93 persons (Duvale Priory (sleeps 22), Orchard Barn (sleeps 26), Duvale Barn (sleeps 33), Duvale Retreat (sleeps 12)) [39]
Tristram Risdon was an English antiquarian and topographer, and the author of Survey of the County of Devon. He was able to devote most of his life to writing this work. After he completed it in about 1632 it circulated around interested people in several manuscript copies for almost 80 years before it was first published by Edmund Curll in a very inferior form. A full version was not published until 1811. Risdon also collected information about genealogy and heraldry in a note-book; this was edited and published in 1897.
Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, 7th Baronet of Killerton in Devon and Petherton Park in Somerset, was Member of Parliament for Devon, 1746–1747, for Somerset, 1767–1768, and was High Sheriff of Somerset in 1751. He was a prominent member of the West Country gentry, and a famous staghunter who used as his hunting seats his wife's Exmoor estates of Pixton and Holnicote.
Escot in the parish of Talaton, near Ottery St Mary in Devon, is an historic estate. The present mansion house known as Escot House is a grade II listed building built in 1837 by Sir John Kennaway, 3rd Baronet to the design of Henry Roberts, to replace an earlier house built in about 1680 by Sir Walter Yonge, 3rd Baronet (1653–1731) of Great House in the parish of Colyton, Devon, to the design of Robert Hooke, which burned down in 1808. Today it remains the home of the Kennaway baronets.
Sir Henry Ford, of Nutwell in Devon was four times MP for Tiverton between 1664 and 1685 and twice Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 1669–70 and 1672–73.
The red deer of Exmoor have been hunted since Norman times, when Exmoor was declared a Royal Forest. Collyns stated the earliest record of a pack of Staghounds on Exmoor was 1598. In 1803, the "North Devon Staghounds" became a subscription pack. In 1824/5 30 couples of hounds, the last of the true staghounds, were sold to a baron in Germany. Today, the Devon and Somerset is one of three staghounds packs in the UK, the others being the Quantock Staghounds and the Tiverton Staghounds. All packs hunt within Devon and Somerset. The Chairman as of 2016 is Tom Yandle, who was previously High Sheriff of Somerset in 1999.
Heanton Satchville was a historic manor in the parish of Petrockstowe, North Devon, England. With origins in the Domesday manor of Hantone, it was first recorded as belonging to the Yeo family in the mid-14th century and was then owned successively by the Rolle, Walpole and Trefusis families. The mansion house was destroyed by fire in 1795. In 1812 Lord Clinton purchased the manor and mansion of nearby Huish, renamed it Heanton Satchville, and made it his seat. The nearly-forgotten house was featured in the 2005 edition of Rosemary Lauder's "Vanished Houses of North Devon". A farmhouse now occupies the former stable block with a large tractor shed where the house once stood. The political power-base of the Rolle family of Heanton Satchville was the pocket borough seat of Callington in Cornwall, acquired in 1601 when Robert Rolle purchased the manor of Callington.
The landed gentry and nobility of Devonshire, like the rest of the English and European gentry, bore heraldic arms from the start of the age of heraldry circa 1200–1215. The fashion for the display of heraldry ceased about the end of the Victorian era (1901) by which time most of the ancient arms-bearing families of Devonshire had died out, moved away or parted with their landed estates.
The feudal barony of Bampton was one of eight feudal baronies in Devonshire which existed during the mediaeval era, and had its caput at Bampton Castle within the manor of Bampton.
William Thomson (1746–1817) was a Scottish minister, historian and miscellaneous writer. He often wrote under the pseudonym of Captain Thomas Newte and this fictitious character had his own history and received independent recognition.
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Tom Yandle of Riphay, Brushford, near Dulverton in Somerset, England, is a farmer and chairman of the Devon and Somerset Staghounds and was High Sheriff of Somerset in 1999 and a committee member of both the National Trust and Exmoor National Park. He played a leading role in challenging both the National Trust's decision to ban stag hunting on the Holnicote Estate and the Labour government's ultimately successful proposal to ban hunting with hounds. The Yandle family was previously resident at nearby Duvale an historic estate in the parish of Bampton, Devon. In 1994 he purchased Northmoor House near Dulverton, and 100 acres of surrounding land, which he later sold.
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Richard Crocker of Devon, England, was a Member of Parliament for Tavistock in Devon in 1335. His descendants were the prominent Crocker family of Crocker's Hele in the parish of Meeth, Devon, later seated at Lyneham in the parish of Yealmpton, Devon until 1740.
William Crocker, living during the reign of King Edward III (1327-1377), of Crocker's Hele in the parish of Meeth, Devon, was a Member of Parliament. His descendants were the prominent Crocker family seated at Lyneham in the parish of Yealmpton, Devon until 1740. William Crocker is the earliest member of the family recorded in the Heraldic Visitations of Devon, although one of his ancestors is known to have been Richard Crocker (fl.1335) of Devon, England, a Member of Parliament for Tavistock in Devon in 1335.
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