Brealeys

Beaford is a village and civil parish in the Torridge district of Devon, England. The village is about five miles south-east of Great Torrington, on the A3124 road towards Exeter. According to the 2001 census the parish had a population of 393, compared to 428 in 1901. The western boundary of the parish is formed by the River Torridge and it is surrounded, clockwise from the north, by the parishes of St Giles in the Wood, Roborough, Ashreigney, Dolton, Merton and Little Torrington.The parish church, which is in the village, is dedicated to All Saints, though before the Reformation it was dedicated to St George. It has a 15th-century doorway, arches and windows, as well as a Norman font, but according to W. G. Hoskins (writing in 1954) it is otherwise dull, having been heavily restored. Its tower was rebuilt with a small spire in 1910.Greenwarren House in the village is the former home of Beaford Arts, the country's longest established rural arts centre. It is now a private family house.Beaford House was host to some of the Great Train Robbers, who are understood to have buried more than £200,000 of the stolen money in nearby woods.Beaford has a cricket team which competes in division 2 of the North Devon League.

Barometer World was the world's only barometer museum, and was located in the village of Merton, near Great Torrington, Devon, England. Barometer World makes, sells and restores barometers of a variety of types. It was established in 1979 by Philip Collins. In March 2022, Barometer World closed its museum and premises in Merton, Devon. It is now an online-only business.

Merton is a village, ecclesiastical parish, former manor and civil parish administered by the local government district of Torridge, Devon, England. The parish, which lies about five miles south east of the town of Great Torrington, is surrounded clockwise from the north by the parishes of Little Torrington, Beaford, Dolton, Huish, Petrockstowe and Peters Marland. In 2001 its population was 331, down from the 507 residents it had in 1901. The eastern and northern boundaries of the parish follow the loops of the River Torridge and the other sides are defined by the River Mere. The village forms part of the electoral ward of Clinton. The population at the 2011 census was 1,537.The village is on the A386 road between Meeth and Great Torrington. The parish church, on the west side of the village, is dedicated to All Saints and dates from around 1400. It suffered a heavy Victorian restoration between 1872 and 1875 by R. M. Fulford, but the east window of the north chapel retains many fragments of late medieval stained glass. Speccot, Dunsbear and Potheridge were estates mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086.

Huish (anciently Hiwis) is a small village, civil parish and former manor in the Torridge district of Devon, England. The eastern boundary of the parish is formed by the River Torridge and the western by the Rivers Mere and Little Mere, and it is surrounded, clockwise from the north, by the parishes of Merton, Dolton, Meeth and Petrockstowe. In 2001 the population of the parish was 49, down from 76 in 1901.The village lies just off the A386 road, about five and a half miles north of Hatherleigh, and about seven miles south of Great Torrington. It was a member of the historic hundred of Shebbear and was in the deanery of Torrington.The majority of the parish consists of parkland belonging to Heanton Satchville, the seat of Baron Clinton; the mansion-house is a few hundred yards to the north of the church.

St Giles in the Wood is a village and civil parish in the Torridge district of Devon, England. The village lies about 2.5 miles east of the town of Great Torrington, and the parish, which had a population of 566 in 2001 compared with 623 in 1901, is surrounded clockwise from the north by the parishes of Huntshaw, Yarnscombe, High Bickington, Roborough, Beaford, Little Torrington and Great Torrington. Most of the Victorian terraced cottages in the village, on the east side of the church, were built by the Rolle Estate.Within the parish are several historic residences: Stevenstone (the historic seat of the Rolle family), Way Barton (home of the Pollard family), Winscott (where Tristram Risdon, author of the Survey of Devonshire, was born, c. 1580), Dodscott and Woodleigh Barton. There are also a number of hamlets including High Bullen, Healand and Kingscott (where there is a Baptist chapel dating from 1833, and a late 19th-century school), and in the south-west of the parish is the Royal Horticultural Society's Rosemoor Garden.

Dolton is a small village and civil parish in the Torridge district of Devon, south-west England, surrounded, clockwise from the north, by Beaford, Ashreigney, Winkleigh, Dowland, Meeth, Huish and Merton. It has a population of around 900.Dolton appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Duueltone. The name may mean "farmstead in the open country frequented by doves" (Old English dūfe + feld + tūn). The Tarka Trail passes by Dolton. The parish church is dedicated to St Edmund. The historic stately home Stafford Barton is close by. Dolton is twinned with Amfreville in France, and Hillerse in Germany. Anthony Horneck FRS, the Protestant theologian, lived in Dolton between 1670 and 1671. Henry Bentinck, 11th Earl of Portland, lived at a house called Little Cudworthy and died there in 1997. Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts lived at Halsdon House near the village for some years until his death in 2021.

Potheridge (alias Great Potheridge, Poderigge, Poderidge or Powdrich) is a former Domesday Book estate in the parish of Merton, in the historic hundred of Shebbear, 3 miles south-east of Great Torrington, Devon, England. It is the site of a former grand mansion house re-built by George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle (1608–1670) circa 1660 on the site of the former manor house occupied by his family since at the latest 1287. It was mostly demolished in 1734 after the death of the widow of his son Christopher Monck, 2nd Duke of Albemarle (died 1688). The surviving section forms the present Great Potheridge farmhouse, a Grade I listed building, inside which some remnants of the former mansion remain, including a grand staircase, two massive 17th-century classical-style doorcases and a colossal relief-sculpted wooden overmantel. The latter depicts within a wreath of flowers, against a background of an elaborate antique trophy of arms, five putti, two of which, in flight, hold between them a crown, an allusion to Monck's central role in the Restoration of the Monarchy. The chapel "of Grecian architecture", i.e. classical, was in ruins in 1770 and was almost entirely demolished before 1822, with only the west wall left standing. In 1879, the stables were still standing and were said to "give the visitor some idea of the magnificence of the ancient building".In 2014 Great Potheridge, with 6 acres of land remaining of the former estate, is used as an outdoor activity centre for young people, operated by Encompass Training. It is today known as "Great Potheridge" to distinguish it from the nearby house, formerly on the estate, known as "Little Potheridge".

The large parish church of St Giles, which is in the village of St Giles in the Wood, Devon, England, came into being in 1309. When it was restored in 1862–3, many monuments were retained, including the monument and effigy of Thomas Chafe (d. 1648) of Dodscott, three monumental brasses, of Alenora Pollard (d. 1430), Margaret Rolle of Stevenstone (d. 1592) and a small brass of her husband John Rolle (d.1570). There are also 19th- and 20th-century monuments to the Rolle family.

Dowland is a civil parish in Devon, situated near Winkleigh. It is also the name of a hamlet in the parish.

Roborough is a village and civil parish 5.5 mi (8.9 km) from Great Torrington, in Devon, England. Situated topographically on the plateau between the Torridge and Taw Rivers, the parish covers 1,258 ha (3,110 acres) and contains a population of some 258 parishioners. It is surrounded by a pastoral landscape of rectangular fields, high hedges and scattered farmsteads.

Stevenstone is a former manor within the parish of St Giles in the Wood, near Great Torrington, North Devon. It was the chief seat of the Rolle family, one of the most influential and wealthy of Devon families, from c. 1524 until 1907. The Rolle estates as disclosed by the Return of Owners of Land, 1873 (corrected by Bateman, 1883) comprised 55,592 acres producing an annual gross income of £47,170, and formed the largest estate in Devon, followed by the Duke of Bedford's estate centred on Tavistock comprising 22,607 with an annual gross value of nearly £46,000.From the Glorious Revolution of 1688 to the Reform Act of 1832 the county parliamentary representatives were chosen effectively from only ten great families, mostly territorial magnates. The three most dominant of these were the Bampfyldes of Poltimore House and North Molton, the Courtenays of Powderham Castle, and the Rolles of Stevenstone and Bicton. The Rolles were not from the mediaeval aristocracy as were the Courtenays, but were descended from an able lawyer and administrator of the Tudor era, as were the Russells, later Earls and Dukes of Bedford. Both Russells and Rolles acquired much former monastic land in Devon following the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Indeed, the Rolles were in the opinion of Hoskins (1954) "second only to the Russells in the extent of their monastic and other lands and in time were to surpass them".In 1669 Sir John Rolle (died 1706), KB of Stevenstone had an annual income of £6,000 making him "one of the richest gentlemen in the country". He died in 1706 seized of more than 40 manors in Devon.The family built several different houses on the same site known as Stevenstone House, the last Victorian version of which was built between 1868 and 1872. It was significantly reduced in size soon after 1912 and then after 1931 it was gradually demolished piecemeal for building materials.

Petrockstow railway station was a station serving the village of Petrockstowe in West Devon, which is about one mile away. The station was, throughout its passenger-carrying life from 1925 to 1965, spelt without the final "e" of the village name. The railway was originally built as a narrow-gauge freight line to carry ball clay to Torrington from the Marland and Meeth clay pits. The Torrington and Marland Railway then became the basis of the northern section of the North Devon and Cornwall Junction Light Railway, which opened in 1925 and remained a private line until finally becoming part of the Southern Region of British Railways in 1948.A victim of Beeching, the line closed to passengers in 1965 but it remained open for freight trains from the Meeth quarries which passed into the rail network through Barnstaple and Torrington until 1982.In 2014 a small group of local railway enthusiast began clearance work at the Station, clearing the platforms and vegetation. It is hoped to partly restore the Station, in conjunction with the owners, Devon County Council.