Highweek

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Village in Devon, England

title: "Highweek" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["villages-in-devon", "newton-abbot", "former-civil-parishes-in-devon"] description: "Village in Devon, England" topic_path: "general/villages-in-devon" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highweek" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Village in Devon, England ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox UK place"]

FieldValue
countryEngland
official_nameHighweek
static_imageAll Saints Church, Highweek - geograph.org.uk - 902390.jpg
static_image_width240px
static_image_captionAll Saints Church, Highweek
coordinates
label_positionleft
civil_parishNewton Abbot
shire_districtTeignbridge
shire_countyDevon
regionSouth West England
constituency_westminsterNewton Abbot
post_townNEWTON ABBOT
postcode_districtTQ12
postcode_areaTQ
dial_code01626
os_grid_referenceSX846720
::

|country= England |official_name= Highweek |static_image= All Saints Church, Highweek - geograph.org.uk - 902390.jpg |static_image_width= 240px |static_image_caption= All Saints Church, Highweek |coordinates = |label_position= left |civil_parish= Newton Abbot |population= |population_ref= |shire_district= Teignbridge |shire_county= Devon |region= South West England |constituency_westminster=Newton Abbot |post_town= NEWTON ABBOT |postcode_district= TQ12 |postcode_area= TQ |dial_code= 01626 |os_grid_reference= SX846720 Highweek (anciently called Teignwick (alias Teyngewike, Tingwike, Teyngewyk, etc.)), less commonly called Highweek Village is an ecclesiastical parish,{{cite web |url=http://exeter.anglican.org/parishstaff.php?parid=421 |title=Parish of Highweek |publisher=Diocese of Exeter |accessdate=28 February 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080629030046/http://exeter.anglican.org/parishstaff.php?parid=421 |archive-date=29 June 2008 |url-status=dead |url=http://www.thisissouthdevon.co.uk/news/Village-campaigners-fight-new-homes/article-1719940-detail/article.html |title=Village campaigners fight further new homes |last=Dale |first=Laura |publisher=This is South Devon |date=18 January 2010 |accessdate=22 February 2011

Following the Norman Conquest of 1066 the Normans built a motte-and-bailey castle here, of which only a dyke remains (giving it the local name of "Castle Dyke"), which probably remained occupied until the mid 13th century, when the chief residence of the locality became Bradley House. The mediaeval parish church, dedicated to All Saints, now a Grade I listed building, was consecrated in 1428. Until 1864 it served as a chapel of ease to the parish church of adjoining Kingsteignton having been built after the villagers petitioned the pope for their own graveyard.

Geography

Highweek is on a ridge that overlooks the South Devon market town of Newton Abbot, the Teign Estuary and the Bovey Basin. To the north west, Haytor and surrounding parts of Dartmoor dominate the skyline, and to the north east the Haldon Hills some 9 mi away towards Exeter can be seen. Immediately north of the village there is the unusual cone shaped hill of Daracombe Beacon that overlooks the ball clay opencast pit of Ringslade Quarry, Howton Road and the 1st Highweek Village Scout Group building. The Beacon has a cluster of trees on its peak and is one of the highest points in Newton Abbot at 82 m. Another high point immediately north of the road of Gaze Hill contains a hidden covered municipal water tank.

The village gives its name to a geological unit (the Highweek Unit) that extends for at least 8 km westwards from the village. The geology underlying Highweek itself is Gurrington slate of Famennian age (a late subdivision of the Devonian period), with small outliers of resistant spilites forming both the ridge on which the church stands and the hills north of the village, such as the aforementioned Daracombe Beacon.{{cite book |last1=Selwood |first1=E. B. |last2=Edwards |first2=R.A.

|title=Geology of the country around Newton Abbot |pages=13, 38–40 |year=1984 |publisher=HMSO |location=London |isbn=0-11-884274-9|display-authors=etal}}

All Saints Church

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/All_Saints_Church,_Highweek_from_the_graveyard.jpg" caption="The church and its graveyard"] ::

By 1427 the parishioners had built a chapel at Highweek, but they had to carry their dead about 3 mi to the parish church in Kingsteignton. They petitioned Pope Martin V for their own graveyard because "the tides and rivers, and the mud of winter and the intense heat of summer" made the journey "both troublesome and dangerous to accomplish".{{cite book |editor=Dunstan, G. R. |title=The Register of Edmund Lacy, Bishop of Exeter, 1420–1455 |volume=IV |year=1971 |publisher=Devon & Cornwall Record Society |pages=280–1}} The pope granted permission in a bull dated 14 May 1427, and the church and its churchyard were consecrated by Edmund Lacy, Bishop of Exeter on 19 April 1428. Until 1864 it remained a chapel of ease to Kingsteignton.{{cite book |author=Pevsner, Nikolaus |authorlink=Nikolaus Pevsner |editor=Cherry, Bridget |title=The Buildings of England: Devon |publisher=Penguin Books |location=Harmondsworth |year=1989 |orig-date=1952 |isbn=0-14-071050-7 |page=584}} All Saints has the Bradley aisle which was built by Richard Yarde of Bradley Manor in the 15th century, and it also had a rood screen that was said to be "beautiful" until it was mutilated in 1786 and later removed completely.{{cite book |last=Rowe |first=Chas. R. |title=South Devon |url=https://archive.org/details/southdevon00rowe |year=1907 |publisher=Adam and Charles Black |location=London |page=136}}

Today, the church is a Church of England place of worship in the Diocese of Exeter, known as Highweek Parish. All Saints shares parishioners in rotating services with the other church in the parish, St Mary the Virgin, Abbotsbury, Church. It is a Grade I listed building.{{cite web |url=http://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/en-464123-parish-church-of-all-saints-newton-abbot |title=Parish Church of All Saints – Newton Abbot – Devon – England |publisher=British Listed Buildings |accessdate=22 February 2011}}

History

Saxon

Highweek stands in an area which experienced invasion and settlement in about 700 AD by the Saxons and then by the Danes in 1001 AD, when they sacked and pillaged the nearby village of Kingsteignton. The Anglo-Saxon suffix -wic means "a settlement", with the original Saxon place name Teignwic thus signifying "settlement by the River Teign.{{cite book |title=The Concise Dictionary of English Etymology |last=Skeat |first=Walter W. |authorlink=Walter William Skeat |edition=Facsimile reprint of Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1884 |year=1993 |publisher=Wordsworth Reference |location=Ware |page=561 |isbn=1-85326-311-7 |url=https://archive.org/details/concisedictionar0000skea/page/561

Norman

The manor, anciently called Teignwic (alias Teignwick, Teyngewike, Teyngewyk, etc.) is not listed in the Domesday Book of 1086, as it was then a part of the large royal manor of Teintone (now Kingsteignton). In the village is a Norman motte-and-bailey earthwork now known as Castle Dyke,{{cite journal | author=Woolner, Diana & Alexander | title=Castle Dyke, Highweek, Newton Abbot, Devon | journal=Report & Transactions of the Devonshire Association | year=1953 | volume=85 | pages=133–8}} a scheduled monument included in the "At Risk" register,{{cite web |url=http://risk.english-heritage.org.uk/2010.aspx?id=6636 |title=Scheduled Monuments at Risk – Castle Dyke, Newton Abbot, Teignbridge, Devon |publisher=English Heritage |accessdate=22 February 2011

12th century

The manor of Teignwick was given by King Henry II (1154-1189) to "John, the son of Lucas his butler". Following the Norman revolt it was forfeited to the crown and was re-granted by King John (1199-1216) to Eustace de Courtenay, apparently a relative of Renaud de Courtenay (d.1194), ancestor of the Earls of Devon.

13th 14th centuries

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/YardArms.png" caption="[[Canting arms]]Bushel vaguely rhyming with Bouget of Bushel: ''Argent, a chevron gules between three water bougets sable''Pole, p.472"] ::

The earliest surviving documentary reference to the manor is as Teyngewike in about 1200. The part of the Hundred of Teignbridge, including Teignwick, which lay to the west of the River Teign were owned by the king, and in 1246 King Henry III granted these lands, including Dipford,Tristram Risdon's Notebook https://archive.org/stream/notebookoftristr00risdrich/notebookoftristr00risdrich_djvu.txt Risdon, Tristram (d.1640), Survey of Devon, 1811 edition, London, 1811, with 1810 Additions, p.136 to Sir Theobald de Englishville{{cite book |last=Carter |first=Philip |title=Newton Abbot |year=2004 |publisher=The Mint Press |location=Exeter |isbn=1-903356-40-7 |pages=8–10}} (d.1262). He appears not to have married and as he had no children, shortly before his death in 1262 and with royal licence dated 1261, he conveyed his lands to his "kinsman or foster child" Robert Bushel (d.1269), whom he had brought up. His heir was his 4 year-old son Theobald Bushel, who became a ward of Henry de Bickleigh and his wife Matilda. It is likely that they abandoned Castle Dyke in favour of a new manor house they built in the nearby valley of the River Lemon.{{cite book |last=Woolner |first=Diana |title=Bradley, Devon (guidebook) |year=1989 |publisher=The National Trust |pages=10–11, 21}} The manor of Teignwick/Highwick was held by the Bushel family for nine generations until the death of John Bushel, the last in the male line, during the reign of King Richard II (1377-1399). During the 13th century the settlement north of the River Lemon became known as Newton Bushel after the Bushel family. By 1301 it was being called Heghwyk, the reference to the prominent (high) hill on which it stands having taken over though the name Teignweek was still in use as late as 1850.{{cite web |url=http://genuki.cs.ncl.ac.uk/DEV/Highweek/index.html |title=Highweek – Genealogy |publisher=Genuki |date=7 September 2008 |accessdate=22 February 2011 |archive-date=6 May 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110506000748/http://genuki.cs.ncl.ac.uk/DEV/Highweek/index.html |url-status=dead

The estate of Ringslade in Highweek was first mentioned in the 13th century as Ryngeslad in 1238. The estate belonged the Segar family from at least the 16th century until the 20th century. Ringslade House was constructed in the 16th century and is today a Grade II listed building.

15th century

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/YardArms.png" caption="Arms of Yarde: ''Argent, a chevron gules between three water bougets sable'',Vivian, p.829; Pole, p.510 arms inherited from the Bushel familyThe original arms of Yarde, also canting arms, were ''A yard measure'' (Tregaskes, Jean H., ''Churston Story: 1088-1998'', First Published 1990, Revised 2nd Edition 1998, p.14) of appearance unknown"] ::

In 1402 the AtYard (later Yarde) family acquired the manor of Highweek. The first holder was Thomas Yarde, son of Roger AtYard by his wife Elizanta (alias Elisote) Bushel, heiress of Highweek. She was the aunt and heiress of John Bushel, the last in the male line. His son and heir was Richard Yarde, Sheriff of Devon in 1442/3, who married Joan Ferrers, the heiress of Churston Ferrers, where a junior branch of the Yarde family was later seated. This Richard Yarde built most of the surviving manor house at Bradley, though a few remnants of the late 13th century Bushel building still survive.

Later history

Newton Bushel combined with New Town of the Abbots (of Torre Abbey) from the south side of the River Lemon to form what became known as Newton Abbot. When elected parish and district councils were established in 1894, Highweek was initially given a parish council and included in the Newton Abbot Rural District. The parish council lasted for less than seven years; in 1901 Highweek was transferred into the urban district of Newton Abbot. After 1901 Highweek was therefore classed as an urban parish and so no longer had a parish council, instead being directly administered by Newton Abbot Urban District Council. The civil parish of Highweek was eventually abolished on 1 April 1974 when the three parishes within Newton Abbot Urban District (Highweek, Wolborough and Milber) were united as a single parish called Newton Abbot within the new Teignbridge district. In 1951 the parish had a population of 5626.

Modern Highweek

Today Highweek has a public house called the Highweek Village Inn, a garage, village hall, and a late medieval church. Within the parish boundary there are two secondary schools with sixth forms, Coombeshead Academy and Newton Abbot College, and another church: St Mary the Virgin, Abbotsbury. At the meeting point of the road of Highweek Village and Coombeshead Road there are rustic cottages and terraced houses. There was a village post office into the 1990s, opposite the Highweek Inn at the top of Pitt Hill Road, but it is now residential.

Notable residents

  • Segar family, a Devonshire gentry family listed in the Heraldic Visitations of Devon, 1620 and who lived at Ringslade in Highweek.
  • Cricketer and rugby player Dr Henry Banbury Mapleton MA, MD) grew up in Highweek. In 1894, he became medical officer for Newton Abbot which also included Highweek
  • Bruce Montgomery, film composer and mystery writer (as Edmund Crispin), lived here from 1964 until his death in 1978.

References

References

  1. Pole, p.262
  2. "Bradley ward 2011".
  3. Pevsner, p.589
  4. [[Nikolaus Pevsner. Pevsner, Nikolaus]] & Cherry, Bridget, The Buildings of England: Devon, London, 2004, p.584
  5. [[William Pole (antiquary). Pole, Sir William]] (d.1635), Collections Towards a Description of the County of Devon, [[Sir John de la Pole, 6th Baronet. Sir John-William de la Pole]] (ed.), London, 1791, p.262: ''"High Wike lieth in the parish of Kingstington, but hath a chappell of ease"''.
  6. Google Earth 2011
  7. Thorn, Caroline & Frank, (eds.) Domesday Book, (Morris, John, gen.ed.) Vol. 9, Devon, Parts 1 & 2, Phillimore Press, Chichester, 1985, Part 2 (Notes), 1:10
  8. Smith, Paul C (December 2017) ''The Story of All Saints' Church Highweek'' (Parish Information leaflet)
  9. Not listed in the Courtenay pedigree in [[John Lambrick Vivian. Vivian, Lt.Col. J.L.]], (Ed.) The Visitations of the County of Devon: Comprising the [[Heraldic visitation. Heralds' Visitations]] of 1531, 1564 & 1620, Exeter, 1895, p.243
  10. Bushel vaguely rhyming with Bouget
  11. Pole, p.472
  12. Gover, J. E. B., Mawer, A. & Stenton, F. M. (1931). ''The Place-Names of Devon''. (English Place-Name Society. Vol viii.) Part I. Cambridge University Press; pp. 472–73.
  13. Pole, p.262 [[regnal date]] "31 Henry III"
  14. Thorn & Thorn, Part 2 (Notes), 1:10
  15. Risdon, p.136
  16. Pole, p.262 [[regnal date]] "46 Henry III"
  17. "adopted son" per Risdon, p.136
  18. Pole, pp.262-3
  19. Beavis, Derek. Newton Abbot: The Story of the Town's Past. United Kingdom: Barracuda, 1985. pg 65
  20. "Ringslade and Attached Walls Railings Gate Piers and Outbuildings". British Listed Buildings.
  21. Vivian, p.829; Pole, p.510
  22. The original arms of Yarde, also canting arms, were ''A yard measure'' (Tregaskes, Jean H., ''Churston Story: 1088-1998'', First Published 1990, Revised 2nd Edition 1998, p.14) of appearance unknown
  23. ''Newton Abbot – Town Council Official Guide''. Newton Abbot 1990s edition, "K.L / H.P Ltd./ D.M.C / 9006 Printed in Great Britain" {{ISBN. 0-7140-2705-7
  24. Pole, p.263
  25. Vivian, p.829; Risdon, p.160
  26. [[William George Hoskins. Hoskins, W.G.]], A New Survey of England: Devon, London, 1959 (first published 1954), p.442
  27. "Newton Abbot Urban District". GB Historical GIS / University of Portsmouth.
  28. "Devonshire (South Part): Diagram showing administrative boundaries, 1972". Ordnance Survey.
  29. {{cite legislation UK. (1973)
  30. "Newton Abbot Registration District". UKBMD.
  31. "Population statistics Highweek Ch/CP through time". [[A Vision of Britain through Time]].
  32. [[John Lambrick Vivian. Vivian, Lt.Col. J.L.]], (Ed.) The Visitations of the County of Devon: Comprising the [[Heraldic visitation. Heralds' Visitations]] of 1531, 1564 & 1620, Exeter, 1895, p.433, pedigree of ''Segar of Highweek''

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villages-in-devonnewton-abbotformer-civil-parishes-in-devon