Setting the scene

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Kingsbridge is a small market town situated in the area of Devon known as the South Hams. However, this pretty place presents a number of drawbacks for family historians which make it one of the most difficult areas in Devon in which to conduct research, especially from outside the county.

Kingsbridge is not one single place built around a parish church - it has been formed by combining a number of parishes. Situated at the head of the Salcombe River, Kingsbridge first grew up in two parts on either side of a stream leading down into the river. On the west bank lies the original Kingsbridge parish with its church of St. Edmund while on the east bank is Dodbrooke with its own parish church of St.Thomas-a-Becket.

Kingsbridge

Kingsbridge in the 18th century

Dodbrook lies to the right of St.Edmund's Church

	But the combined town of Kingsbridge and Dodbrooke has an older neighbour of even greater importance. Churchstow boasts the mother church (St. Mary) for both of the above parishes and once belonged to Buckland Abbey. In the early years of the 13th century, the Abbot carved out 35 acres of his Churchstow estate and called it Kingsbridge. The boundary lines between the various parishes meander around and through the town - one moment you are in Kingsbridge then, cross a street and you are in Dodbrooke. The Kingsbridge Workhouse which seems to lie in the very heart of the town is, in fact, in the parish of Churchstow.
Dodbrook Church

To add to the confusion, there are parish churches at Charleton, West Alvington, Buckland Tout Saints and Sherford. all within the Civil Parish of Kingsbridge and all close enough to Churchstow, Kingsbridge and Dodbrooke to make it easy for the inhabitants to move freely around in their search for work - which they frequently did.

And that's not all the difficulties by a long chalk. Students of the 1841 Census will have noticed that the parishes are arranged under an ancient grouping called The Hundreds. Dodbrooke lies within the Hundred of Coleridge (not to be confused with the Parish of Coldridge, formerly Coleridge, in the northern part of the County!) However, Kingsbridge, across the street, lies within the Hundred of Stanborough.

The final blow against the pursuit of research in this area is an almost complete absence from the IGI. You will not find any mention in those records of Churchstow, Buckland Tout Saints, Sherford, West Alvington, or Charleton. Of Dodbrooke, you will find only a 17-year listing of birth records from a Baptist Chapel; of Kingsbridge itself, there is a slightly wider listing from the parish registers but the baptismal entries end at 1797 and the marriage entries at 1837.

Since these places are contiguous parishes (see Issue 18) a great hole, several miles wide, is thereby punched in the records, leaving as the researcher's only option, a full search of the original registers kept here in Devon, - and when you do this, you will discover that some of these are incomplete! So anyone searching in the South Hams has to accept that there are some things they may never be able to verify.

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