Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 12:52, 5 June 2012

Chittlehampton
Tower of St Hieritha's Church, in the opinion of many unsurpassed in design and proportion among English village churches; viewed from south
Population	820 (2001)
OS grid reference	SS6325
Civil parish	Chittlehampton
District	North Devon
Shire county	Devon
Region	South West
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	UMBERLEIGH
Postcode district	EX37
Dialling code	01769
Police	Devon and Cornwall
Fire	Devon and Somerset
Ambulance	South Western
UK Parliament	North Devon
List of places UK England Devon

Chittlehampton is a village and civil parish in the North Devon district of Devon in England. According to the 2001 census, the parish had a population of 820.

The parish originally included two exclaves; Chittlehamholt to the south (now a parish in itself), and part of the modern parish of East and West Buckland. It now includes Chittlehampton, Umberleigh, Furze, Stowford and some other outlying hamlets. The village was the site of limestone quarries which supplied many of the county's lime kilns.

Parish Church

Chittlehampton is the home of St. Hieritha's Church and holy well. Until the 16th century many people made pilgrimages to Chittlehampton to visit the well. Today, campanologists travel from far and wide to play the famous bells in the tower of St Hieritha's church. The church is large and of the late Perpendicular period. St Hieritha is said to have been buried under part of the church. She was a saint of the 7th century.

Saint Urith's holy well still stands at the east end of Chittlehampton, now called by the corrupt name of Taddy Well or Saint Teara's Well. The exact burial place of Saint Urith was probably in the small chapel on the north side of the sanctuary of the parish church, which originally contained an image of the saint. This chapel now doubles as a passage leading to a vestry. There is reason to believe that a medieval slab there may still cover Saint Urith's body. There was a regular pilgrimage to her shrine on her feast day, 8 July, until 1539. Offerings left there were sufficient to rebuild the church tower, reputedly the finest in Devon. Even in the last year of pilgrimages, the vicar received £50 from his share of the offerings. This was three times his income from tithes and glebe. By 1540 the saint's statue had been removed from the church, leading to the further loss of £50 in offerings. The pulpit of the church, carved around 1500, survives and this depicts Urith holding a martyr's palm and the foundation stone of the church. A modern statue now stands in a niche high up on the exterior of the tower and she is also shown in a stained-glass window of the 16th century found at Nettlecombe in Somerset. The pilgrimage has now been revived and villagers still celebrate the legend on her feast day, with a procession to the well. The Trinity College hymn is sung by the congregation, the well is opened and water drawn from it and blessed.

The Trinity College hymn

"Sing, Chittlehampton, sing!
Let all Devon's meadows ring with Holy Gladness for our Saint's renown,
And thou,
Blest maiden pray,
that we on this our day,
May bear our cross and win our heavenly crown".

Monuments

Giffard Monument (1625)

This monument situated against the north wall of the north transept serves as a memorial to five generations of the Giffard family of Brightley Barton, the principal manor within the parish of Chittlehampton. It was erected in 1625 by John Giffard, then a young man, shown kneeling at the bottom right, ostensibly as a monument to his grandfather John Giffard (d.1622), who is represented by the main recumbent effigy. The young John's father Arthur Giffard (d.1616) is shown kneeling opposite his son at the bottom left, praying before a bible placed on a lectern. He pre-deceased his own father John Giffard, whose recumbent effigy is above. Two renaissance-style stone medallions sculpted in relief are positioned above the recumbent effigy and represent on the left Sir Roger Giffard (d.1547) and on the right his son John Giffard (d.1585), father of John (d.1622) below him. On a panel directly above the recumbent effigy are inscribed in Latin, in Roman capitals, the following text:

Hic jacet Johannes Giffard armiger vir pietate probitate prudentia providentia insignis: qui ex Honora uxore e familia Earliensi prolem suscepit faecundissimam. Primogenito autem eius Arthuro defuncto patre adhuc superstite Johannem Arthuri filium haeredem sibi substituit. Familia itaq(ue) sua splendide et foeliciter composita natis natorumq(ue) natis sufficienter dotatis atq(ue) haerede suo Johanne conjugi selectissimae Joannae ex illustri Wyndamiorum prosap(ia) Somerset(.) sociato iam septuacenarius e vivis excessito. Cuius contacta urna e mortuis (2 Reg(orum) xiii : xxi) quasi resurrexisse videntur nomina illa praeclara olim defuncta: Rogerus Giffard miles e familia Halisburieni oriundus qui uxorem habuit Margaretam filiam et haeredem Johannis Cobleigh de Brightly, Johannes Giffard armiger qui uxor fuit Maria filia Richardi Greenfield militis et summae spei Arthurus Giffard qui uxorem sibi ascivit Agnetem filiam Thomae Leigh armigeri. Hoc monumentum piessimae observantiae symbolum posuit Johannes Giffard nepos maestissimus.

Translated into English thus:

“Here lies John Giffard, esquire, a man of outstanding piety, probity, prudence and providence who from Honora his wife, from the family of Earle, received a most plentiful progeny. However with Arthur his firstborn having died with his father still living, he substituted for him as his heir John the son of Arthur. Thus with his family splendidly and successfully settled, with his sons and with the sons of his sons sufficiently provided for and with John his heir having been allied in marriage to the most select Joan from the illustrious stock of Wyndham of Somerset, already a seventy year-old, he departed from the living. With his urn having been touched (2 Kings 13:21), those famous names once upon a time dead seemed as if to have risen up again: Roger Giffard, knight, sprung from the family of Halsbury, who had as his wife Margaret the daughter and heiress of John Cobleigh of Brightley; John Giffard, esquire, who Mary was the wife (of), the daughter of Richard Grenville, knight; and of the greatest hope Arthur Giffard who received for his wife Agnes, the daughter of Thomas Leigh, esquire. John Giffard, his most sorrowful grandson, placed here this monument, a symbol of most pious observance”.

Atop in Latin are the words translated as “The angels carried him into Abraham's bosom”.

Descent of the manor

Coblegh

The manor of Chittlehampton was under the lordship of the Coblegh family whose residence was at Brightley Barton. Two monumental brasses commemorating the family are set into two stone slabs measuring 65" * 25" set into the floor of the parish church immediately below and to the west of the pulpit. The more southerly one comprises a brass plaque only, measuring 17 1/4" * 3" (44 * 8 cms) inscribed with the following Latin text in gothic lettering:

Hic jacet Henricus Coblegh et Alicia uxor eius parentes Joh(ann)is Coblegh qui quid(a)m Henricus obiit vice(n)simo die mens(is) Julii Anno d(o)m(ini) mill(ens)imo cccc.o (quadringentensimo) lxx.o

(septuagensimo) quor(um) a(n)i(m)abus pr(opiti)et(ur) de(us) Amen

Which may be translated as:

"Here lie Henry Coblegh and Alice his wife the parents of John Coblegh which certain Henry died on the twentieth day of the month of July in the one thousandth four hundredth and seventieth year of Our Lord on the souls of whom may God look with favour".

The son of Henry Coblegh (d.1470) by his wife Alice was John Coblegh whose monumental brass lies adjacent to the north. John married twice, firstly to Isabella Cornu, secondly to Joan Pyne, as his brass records. His son by his second marriage was John Coblegh (d.1542) who married Joan Fortescue of Filleigh, to whose memory a slab exists within the church. Their only child and sole heiress was Margaret Coblegh who married Sir Roger Giffard (d.1547), thus the manor of Chittlehampton passed to the Giffard family.

Cider production

Sources

• Knight, Rae (Ed.), The Book of Chittlehampton, A North Devon Parish, Tiverton, 2000

References

1. Per church leaflet
2. Office for National statistics : Census 2001 : Parish Headcounts : North Devon Retrieved 28 January 2010
3. Betjeman, John, ed. (1968) Collins Pocket Guide to English Parish Churches; the South. London: Collins; p. 160
4. Genealogy based on information card located in church
5. Literal translation based on information card placed in church
6. Genealogy per information sheet in church

External links

• Genuki Chittlehampton page

• Use dmy dates from March 2012
• Villages in Devon
• Christian pilgrimages