Bideford is a historic port town on the estuary of the River Torridge in north Devon, south-west England. It is the main town of the Torridge local government district.
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.
Tavistock is an ancient stannary and market town within West Devon, England. It is situated on the River Tavy from which its name derives. At the 2011 census the three electoral wards had a population of 13,028. It traces its recorded history back to at least 961 when Tavistock Abbey, whose ruins lie in the centre of the town, was founded. Its most famous son is Sir Francis Drake.
South Molton is a town and civil parish in Devon, England. It is part of the North Devon local government district. The town is on the River Mole.
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).
Totnes Guildhall is a 16th-century Tudor historic guildhall, magistrate's court, and prison, in the town of Totnes, south Devon, in southwest England. It is a Grade I listed building.
Exeter Guildhall on the High Street of Exeter, Devon, England has been the centre of civic government for the city for at least 600 years. Much of the fabric of the building is medieval, though the elaborate frontage was added in the 1590s and the interior was extensively restored in the 19th century. It is a Grade I listed building.
Pentecost Dodderidge of Barnstaple in North Devon, was three times Member of Parliament for Barnstaple in 1621, 1624 and 1625.
The Mayor of Barnstaple together with the Corporation long governed the historic Borough of Barnstaple, in North Devon, England. The seat of government was the Barnstaple Guildhall. The mayor served a term of one year and was elected annually on the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin by a jury of twelve. However Barnstaple was a mesne borough and was held by the Mayor and Corporation in chief not from the king but from the feudal baron of Barnstaple, later known as the lord of the "Castle Manor" or "Castle Court". The Corporation tried on several occasions to claim the status of a "free borough" which answered directly to the monarch and to divest itself of this overlordship, but without success. The mayor was not recognised as such by the monarch, but merely as the bailiff of the feudal baron. The powers of the borough were highly restricted, as was determined by an inquisition ad quod damnum during the reign of King Edward III (1327–1377), which from an inspection of evidence found that members of the corporation elected their mayor only by permission of the lord, legal pleas were held in a court at which the lord's steward, not the mayor, presided, that the borough was taxed by the county assessors, and that the lord held the various assizes which the burgesses claimed. Indeed, the purported ancient royal charter supposedly granted by the Anglo-Saxon King Æthelstan (d.939) and held by the corporation, from which it claimed its borough status, was suspected to be a forgery.
Bremridge is a historic estate within the former hundred of South Molton in Devon, England. It is now within the parish of Filleigh but was formerly in that of South Molton. It is situated 8 miles north-west of South Molton. Since the construction of the nearby A361 North Devon Link Road direct access has been cut off from Bremridge to Filleigh and South Molton. The surviving wing of the mansion house built in 1654 is a Grade II* listed building. Bremridge Wood is the site of an Iron Age enclosure or hill fort, the earthwork of which is situated on a hillside forming a promontory above the River Bray. In Bremridge Wood survives a disused tunnel of the former Great Western Railway line between South Molton and Barnstaple, much of the course of which has been used for the A361. The tunnel is 319 yards long and was identified as "Bremridge Tunnel" in the 1889 Ordnance Survey map but as "Castle Hill Tunnel" in subsequent editions.
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.
St Peter's Church is the parish church of the town of Barnstaple in North Devon, England. Parts of the church date to the 13th-century with much restoration during the Victorian era by George Gilbert Scott and later by his son John Oldrid Scott which changed the atmosphere of the building, although many fine wall monuments and tablets remain. The church comes under the Diocese of Exeter.
The Dodderidgian Library was founded in 1667 in Barnstaple, North Devon, England, by Judith Dodderidge, third wife and widow of John Dodderidge (1610–1659) of Barnstaple and Bremridge, South Molton, MP. It represents one of the earliest town libraries in England which continues in existence since its foundation.
Gilbert Paige of Crock Street, Barnstaple, and Rookabeare House in the adjoining parish of Fremington, Devon, was a merchant who was twice Mayor of Barnstaple in 1629 and 1641.
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.
The Pannier Market in Bideford in North Devon is a large covered Victorian pannier market together with the Butcher's Row of small artisan stalls running along the lower level of the Market. There has been a market on the site since 1675. Since 1989 it has been a Grade II listed building on the register of Historic England.
The Pannier Market in Great Torrington in Devon is a Victorian pannier market of 12 small indoor shops - six either side of a narrow cobbled lane built in 1842 and restored in 1999. The Market House building at the front of the complex has been a Grade II* listed building on the Historic England Register since 1951.
South Molton Pannier Market is the pannier market for the town of South Molton in Devon, England located behind the town's Grade I listed Guildhall which was constructed between 1739 and 1741.
The Guildhall on Broad Street in South Molton in Devon was built between 1739 and 1743 and has been a Grade I listed building on the Register of Historic England since 1951. Today the building is the town hall for South Molton. Beside it, beneath the Old Assembly Room, is the entrance to the Pannier Market for the town.
Faversham Guildhall is a municipal building in the Market Place in Faversham, Kent, England. The structure, which was the meeting place of Faversham Borough Council, is a Grade II* listed building.
