Coffinswell is a small village in South

Devon Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devon is ...

, England, just off the

A380 The Airbus A380 is a large wide-body airliner that was developed and produced by Airbus. It is the world's largest passenger airliner and only full-length double-deck jet airliner. Airbus studies started in 1988, and the project was annou ...

, the busy

Newton Abbot Newton Abbot is a market town and civil parish on the River Teign in the Teignbridge District of Devon, England. Its 2011 population of 24,029 was estimated to reach 26,655 in 2019. It grew rapidly in the Victorian era as the home of the Sou ...

Torquay Torquay ( ) is a seaside town in Devon, England, part of the unitary authority area of Torbay. It lies south of the county town of Exeter and east-north-east of Plymouth, on the north of Tor Bay, adjoining the neighbouring town of Paignton ...

road. It lies within

Teignbridge Teignbridge is a local government district in Devon, England. Its council is based in Newton Abbot. Other towns in the district include Ashburton, Buckfastleigh, Dawlish and Teignmouth. It is named for the old Teignbridge hundred. The ...

District Council. Coffinswell has a church dedicated to

Saint Bartholomew Bartholomew (Aramaic: ; grc, Βαρθολομαῖος, translit=Bartholomaîos; la, Bartholomaeus; arm, Բարթողիմէոս; cop, ⲃⲁⲣⲑⲟⲗⲟⲙⲉⲟⲥ; he, בר-תולמי, translit=bar-Tôlmay; ar, بَرثُولَماو� ...

with a

Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norm ...

font In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design. In mod ...

. Near the church is Court Barton, a

manor house A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The house formed the administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; within its great hall were held the lord's manorial courts, communal meals w ...

of partly 16th century date; the southern part of which was used as a court house by

Torre Abbey Torre Abbey is a historic building and art gallery in Torquay, Devon, which lies in the South West of England. It was founded in 1196 as a monastery for Premonstratensian canons, and is now the best-preserved medieval monastery in Devon and Co ...

. The village lies in a rural valley surrounded by farmland, and has many traditional Devon cob and

thatch Thatching is the craft of building a roof with dry vegetation such as straw, water reed, sedge (''Cladium mariscus''), rushes, heather, or palm branches, layering the vegetation so as to shed water away from the inner roof. Since the bulk of ...

cottages. Lanes and tracks lead to the neighbouring hamlet of Daccombe and over the ridge towards

Haccombe Haccombe is a hamlet, former parish and historic manor in Devon, situated 2 1/2 miles east of Newton Abbot, in the south of the county. It is possibly the smallest parish in England, and was said in 1810 to be remarkable for containing only two ...

and the

River Teign The River Teign is a river in the county of Devon, England. It is long and rises on Dartmoor, becomes an estuary just below Newton Abbot and reaches the English Channel at Teignmouth. Toponymy The river-name 'Teign' is first attested in an An ...

approximately 3 miles north over undulating land.

Surrounding places

Coffinswell is surrounded by several small villages and hamlets. Clockwise from the north-west these are: *

Milber Milber is a housing estate at considered part of the town of Newton Abbot in south Devon. It is on the opposite side of the A380 road from the town centre. Milber contains mainly houses, but also a trading estate and some shops. The estate is pa ...

. This suburb of

is mainly residential. On the hill above it is the

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly appl ...

hill fort of

Milber Down Milber Down is an Iron Age hill fort on the hill above the suburb of Milber, Newton Abbot in Devon, England. The fort is situated on the north-western slope of Milber Down at about 110 metres above sea level, and is bisected by the minor ridge r ...

. * Netherton. A small hamlet between Milber and Haccombe. A footpath leads to

Coombe Cellars Coombe Cellars Inn is a public house on the south bank of the estuary of the River Teign in south Devon, England. It is in the parish of Haccombe with Combe, near the village of Combeinteignhead. The pub was owned by Brewers Fayre until 2006. A ...

on the River Teign. *

is a small hamlet below the St Marychurch road. Its small chapel is dedicated to

Saint Blaise Blaise of Sebaste ( hy, Սուրբ Վլասի, ''Surb Vlasi''; el, Ἅγιος Βλάσιος, ''Agios Vlasios''; ) was a physician and bishop of Sebastea in historical Armenia (modern Sivas, Turkey) who is venerated as a Christian saint and m ...

. Haccombe House is a "nondescript Georgian structure" (Pevsner): built ca. 1800: the chapel is in the grounds; the estate being the historic home of Sir Thomas Carew, 1st Baronet (1595–1640). The benefice is occupied by an incumbent with the rare title of

Archpriest The ecclesiastical title of archpriest or archpresbyter belongs to certain priests with supervisory duties over a number of parishes. The term is most often used in Eastern Orthodoxy and the Eastern Catholic Churches and may be somewhat analogous ...

. The archpresbytery was established in 1341 with six clergy: only the archpriest survived at the Reformation. The parish is combined with that of

Stoke-in-Teignhead Stokeinteignhead () is a village and civil parish in the Teignbridge district of Devon, England, above the southern bank of the estuary of the River Teign. The parish has a short boundary on the estuary, and is otherwise surrounded, clockwise f ...

with Combe-in-Teignhead. * Plant World. A garden centre and a large garden which is designed as a map of the world, with rare plants grown relevant to their location on the map. It is significant for the cultivation of giant

Echium ''Echium'' is a genus of approximately 70 species and several subspecies of flowering plant in the family Boraginaceae. Species of ''Echium'' are native to North Africa, mainland Europe to Central Asia, and the Macaronesian islands where ...

s. * Rocombe. A small hamlet at the bottom of the valley on the lane towards Stokeinteignhead. * Maidencombe, about distant, is the closest beach to Coffinswell. It is also a small village (recognised by Torbay Council) on the coast of

Lyme Bay Lyme Bay is an area of the English Channel off the south coast of England. The south western counties of Devon and Dorset front onto the bay. The exact definitions of the bay vary. The eastern boundary is usually taken to be Portland Bill on the ...

. * Daccombe. A small hamlet of thatched cottages and a campsite. It is at the head of the valley of the Aller Brook. * Barton. A suburb of

. Barton Hall, a former manor house, is here. In recent years it has been a holiday camp and adventure centre with a dry ski slope. *

Kingskerswell Kingskerswell (formerly Kings Carswell, or Kings Kerswell) is a village and civil parish within Teignbridge local government district in the south of Devon, England. The village grew up where an ancient track took the narrowest point across a m ...

is a large village separated from Coffinswell by a hill. Mainly residential, it is on the old Torquay to Newton Abbot road.

Landscape

Most of the landscape around Coffinswell is hilly farmland. Traditional Devon

hedgerows A hedge or hedgerow is a line of closely spaced shrubs and sometimes trees, planted and trained to form a barrier or to mark the boundary of an area, such as between neighbouring properties. Hedges that are used to separate a road from adjoini ...

form field boundaries, and have existed at least since Norman times. Most of the flora is native, with the exception of cultivated or non-native flora in private gardens and horticultural sites, e.g. rhododendrons around Haccombe and

gorse ''Ulex'' (commonly known as gorse, furze, or whin) is a genus of flowering plants in the family Fabaceae. The genus comprises about 20 species of thorny evergreen shrubs in the subfamily Faboideae of the pea family Fabaceae. The species are n ...

and

pine A pine is any conifer tree or shrub in the genus ''Pinus'' () of the family Pinaceae. ''Pinus'' is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae. The World Flora Online created by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Missouri Botanical Garden accep ...

s near Milber.

Water courses, rivers and hydrology

Coffinswell sits in the Daccombe or

Aller Brook The Aller Brook is a stream that flows for through Devon, England. It is a primary tributary of the River Teign, which it joins near Newton Abbot. Course The brook rises to the south of Daccombe, near Coffinswell, and initially flows due west ...

drainage basin A drainage basin is an area of land where all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, t ...

. The Aller Brook flows west toward Aller, Newton Abbot, before entering the River Teign which empties into Lyme Bay at

Teignmouth Teignmouth ( ) is a seaside town, fishing port and civil parish in the English county of Devon. It is situated on the north bank of the estuary mouth of the River Teign, about 12 miles south of Exeter. The town had a population of 14,749 at the ...

. Water collection on the east side of the Daccombe drainage basin or the Watcombe drainage basin flows through Barton and Watcombe into

Babbacombe Babbacombe is a district of Torquay, Devon, England. It is notable for Babbacombe Model Village, the Babbacombe Theatre and its clifftop green, Babbacombe Downs, from which Oddicombe Beach is accessed via Babbacombe Cliff Railway. Frequent bu ...

bay at Watcombe beach. Likewise water collection on the north side of the drainage basin collects in Haccombe and flows toward the River Teign.

Notable residents

The botanist and illustrator Rev.

W. Keble Martin The Rev. William Keble Martin (9 July 1877, Radley – 26 November 1969, Woodbury) was a Church of England priest, botanist and botanical illustrator, known for his ''Concise British Flora in Colour''. The ''Concise British Flora'' was publish ...

was Rector here in the 1920s, and studied the local flora. During his time Michael Constantine de Courcy, 33rd Baron Kingsale (1855–1931) lived in Coffinswell.Lord Kingsale was a director of the Moran Tea Company in Assam: Martin (1968); pp. 94-95

Sarah Buck Sarah Buck (born 3 January 1953) is an English structural and civil engineer and business woman. From 2007–2009 she was the 88th President, and first female President, of the Institution of Structural Engineers. Education Buck attended ...

, the first woman President of the

Institution of Structural Engineers The Institution of Structural Engineers is a professional body for structural engineering based in the United Kingdom. The Institution has over 30,000 members operating in over 100 countries. The Institution provides professional accreditation ...

, (2008) lives in the village.

References

{{authority control Villages in Devon