Barnstaple is a river-port town and civil parish in the North Devon district of Devon, England. The town lies at the River Taw's lowest crossing point before the Bristol Channel. From the 14th century, it was licensed to export wool from which it earned great wealth. Later it imported Irish wool, but its harbour silted up and other trades developed such as shipbuilding, foundries and sawmills. A Victorian market building survives, with a high glass and timber roof on iron columns.
Pilton is a suburb of the town of Barnstaple, it is located about quarter of a mile north of the town centre, in the civil parish of Barnstaple, in the North Devon district, in the county of Devon, England. It was formerly a separate village. The civil parish of Pilton West covers the more rural parts of the ancient parish of Pilton that have not been incorporated into the town of Barnstaple. In 2009, the Pilton (Barnstaple) ward had a population of 4,239 living in some 1,959 dwellings. It has its own infants and junior school, houses one of Barnstaple's larger secondary schools, and one of Barnstaple's SEN specialist schools. North Devon Hospital is also within West Pilton parish. It has a Church Hall, two public houses, two hotels, and residential homes. It has residential estates of both private and public housing including flats. It also has a historic Church that dates back to at least the 11th Century.
Sir John Doddridge was an English lawyer, appointed Justice of the King's Bench in 1612 and served as Member of Parliament for Barnstaple in 1589 and for Horsham in 1604. He was also an antiquarian and writer. He acquired the nickname "the sleeping judge" from his habit of shutting his eyes while listening intently to a case. As a lawyer he was influenced by humanist ideas, and was familiar with the ideas of Aristotle, and the debates of the period between his followers and the Ramists. He was a believer in both the rationality of the English common law and in its connection with custom. He was one of the Worthies of Devon of the biographer John Prince (d.1723).
The Priory of St Mary Magdalene in Barnstaple was a priory in Devon, England. It was founded in about 1107 by Juhel de Totnes, feudal baron of Barnstaple, who had earlier founded Totnes Priory in about 1087 at the caput of his former feudal barony of Totnes, from which he had been expelled. Barnstaple Priory was of the Cluniac order. It was dedicated to St Mary Magdalene. It was situated on land outside the town walls stretching from the North Gate to the East Gate with the River Yeo forming its northern boundary. Nearby to the north across the River Yeo was the Benedictine Pilton Priory of St Mary the Virgin, a cell of Malmesbury Abbey, founded slightly later, between 1107 and 1199.
Richard Ferris was a wealthy merchant from Barnstaple in Devon, England who served as a Member of Parliament for Barnstaple in 1640 and served twice as Mayor of Barnstaple in 1632 and 1646. He founded the Barnstaple Grammar School, otherwise known as the "Blue School".
Benjamin Incledon (1730–1796) of Pilton House, Pilton, near Barnstaple in North Devon, was an English antiquarian and genealogist. He served as Recorder of Barnstaple (1758–1796).
Pentecost Dodderidge of Barnstaple in North Devon, was three times Member of Parliament for Barnstaple in 1621, 1624 and 1625.
Sir John Chichester (1519/20-1569) of Raleigh in the parish of Pilton, near Barnstaple in North Devon, was a leading member of the Devonshire gentry, a naval captain, and ardent Protestant who served as Sheriff of Devon in 1550-1551, and as Knight of the Shire for Devon in 1547, April 1554, and 1563, and as Member of Parliament for Barnstaple in 1559, over which borough his lordship of the manor of Raleigh, Pilton had considerable influence.
From AD 1066, the feudal barony of Barnstaple was a large feudal barony with its caput at the town of Barnstaple in north Devon, England. It was one of eight feudal baronies in Devonshire which existed in the Middle Ages. In 1236 it comprised 56 knight's fees or individual member manors. The feudal service owed for half the barony in 1274 was the provision to the royal army of two knights or four sergeants for forty days per annum, later commuted to scutage.
The historic manor of Raleigh, near Barnstaple and in the parish of Pilton, North Devon, England, was the first recorded home in the 14th century of the influential Chichester family of Devon. It was recorded in Domesday Book of 1086 together with three other manors that lay within the later-created parish of Pilton. The manor lies above the River Yeo on the southern slope of the hill on top of which stand the ruins of the Anglo-Saxon hillfort called Roborough Castle. Part of the historic manor of Raleigh is now the site of the North Devon District Hospital.
Hall is a large estate within the parish and former manor of Bishop's Tawton, Devon. It was for several centuries the seat of a younger branch of the prominent and ancient North Devon family of Chichester of Raleigh, near Barnstaple. The mansion house is situated about 2 miles south-east of the village of Bishop's Tawton and 4 miles south-east of Barnstaple, and sits on a south facing slope of the valley of the River Taw, overlooking the river towards the village of Atherington. The house and about 2,500 acres of surrounding land continues today to be owned and occupied by descendants, via a female line, of the Chichester family. The present Grade II* listed neo-Jacobean house was built by Robert Chichester between 1844 and 1847 and replaced an earlier building. Near the house to the south at the crossroads of Herner the Chichester family erected in the 1880s a private chapel of ease which contains mediaeval woodwork saved from the demolished Old Guildhall in Barnstaple.
Pilton House in the parish of Pilton, near Barnstaple, North Devon, Ex31, is an historic grade II listed Georgian mansion house built in 1746 by Robert Incledon (1676-1758), twice Mayor of Barnstaple, who was from nearby Braunton. It is situated almost in the centre of the ancient town of Pilton, but had formerly extensive grounds covering at least 20 acres, which extended down "Pilton Lawn", now built over, to the River Yeo. It later served as the residence for various Members of Parliament for Barnstaple, for which it was well suited being only a 10-minute walk from the centre of that town, yet in a secluded situation with extensive grounds, and sufficiently large and grand for entertaining borough officials and electors.
Robert Incledon (1676–1758) of Pilton House, Pilton, near Barnstaple in North Devon, was a lawyer of New Inn, London, a Clerk of the Peace for Devon, Deputy Recorder of Barnstaple and was twice Mayor of Barnstaple, in 1712 and 1721. In 1713 as mayor he supervised the building of the Mercantile Exchange on Barnstaple Quay, as recorded on the building by a contemporary brass plaque and sculpture of his armorials. He built Pilton House in 1746.
Queen Anne's Walk is a grade I listed building in the town of Barnstaple, North Devon, completed in 1713 as a meeting place for the town's merchants. It is believed to have been designed by the architect William Talman, on the basis of its similarity to his work at the Hall in Drayton, Northamptonshire. It was promoted and financed by the thirteen members of the Corporation of Barnstaple whose armorials are sculpted on and above the parapet, and the work was overseen by Robert Incledon (1676–1758), Mayor of Barnstaple in 1712–13. It has been owned for many decades by North Devon District Council, which currently (2014) leases it to Barnstaple Town Council, and now trades as The Cafe on the Strand.
Yeotown was a historic estate situated in the parish of Goodleigh, North Devon, about 1 1/2 miles north-east of the historic centre of Barnstaple. The mansion house was remodelled in about 1807 in the neo-gothic style by Robert Newton Incledon (1761-1846), eldest son of Benjamin Incledon (1730-1796) of Pilton House, Pilton, near Barnstaple, an antiquarian and genealogist and Recorder of the Borough of Barnstaple (1758–1796). It was demolished during his lifetime and today only one of the large gatehouse survives, since converted into a farmhouse known as Ivy Lodge. The surviving drawing of the house in the collection of the North Devon Athaneum in Barnstaple shows a large chapel, or small church, with a tall square three-storied pinnacled tower attached to the house.
Richard Beaple of Barnstaple, Devon, was a wealthy merchant, ship owner and member of the Spanish Company, and was three times Mayor of Barnstaple in 1607, 1621 and 1635. His elaborate mural monument survives in St Peter's Church, Barnstaple.
Sir Nicholas II Hooper (1654-1731) of Fullabrook, Braunton and Raleigh, Pilton in Devon, was a lawyer who served as Tory Member of Parliament for Barnstaple 1695-1715.
The recorder of Barnstaple was a recorder, a form of senior judicial officer, usually an experienced barrister, within the jurisdiction of the Borough of Barnstaple in Devon. He was usually a member of the local North Devonshire gentry. The position of recorder of any borough carried a great deal of prestige and power of patronage. The recorder of a borough was often entrusted by the mayor and corporation to nominate its Members of Parliament, as was the case with Sir Hugh I Pollard, Recorder of Barnstaple, who in 1545 nominated the two MP's to represent the Borough of Barnstaple. In the 19th century a recorder was the sole judge who presided at a Quarter Sessions of a Borough, a "Court of Record", and was a barrister of at least five years' standing. He fixed the dates of the Quarter Sessions at his own discretion "as long as he holds it once every quarter of a year", or more often if he deemed fit.
Arthur Champneys of Raleigh House in the parish of Pilton, Devon, and of Love Lane in the City of London, England, was a wealthy merchant and a Member of Parliament for Barnstaple, in Devon, from 1690 to 1705.
Great Torrington Town Hall is a municipal building in the High Street, Great Torrington, Devon, England. The town hall, which is the meeting place of Great Torrington Town Council, is a Grade II listed building.
