Halwell is a village, former parish and former manor in

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. Devo ...

South West England South West England, or the South West of England, is one of nine official regions of England. It consists of the counties of Bristol, Cornwall (including the Isles of Scilly), Dorset, Devon, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wiltshire. Cities ...

. It is presently administered by the

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

of Halwell and Moreleigh, itself administered by

South Hams South Hams is a local government district on the south coast of Devon, England. Services divide between those provided by its own Council headquartered in Totnes, and those provided by Devon County Council headquartered in the city of Exete ...

district council. In 1961 the civil parish had a population of 219.

Geography

It is located south of

Totnes Totnes ( or ) is a market town and civil parish at the head of the estuary of the River Dart in Devon, England, within the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is about west of Paignton, about west-southwest of Torquay and abo ...

, north of

Kingsbridge Kingsbridge is a market town and tourist hub in the South Hams district of Devon, England, with a population of 6,116 at the 2011 census. Two electoral wards bear the name of ''Kingsbridge'' (East & North). Their combined population at the ab ...

and west of Dartmouth, on the junction of the A381 and A3122 roads serving the three towns.

Toponymy

The name means "The holy well" and it derives from

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...

''halig'': "holy" plus ''wylle'': "well". It is first attested as ''halganþille'' in a 16th-century copy of an early 10th-century document. Other early forms include ''Halgewill(e)'' and ''Halgh(e)wille'' (14th century or earlier), ''Hallewell'' (c. 1400), and ''Holwell'' (1675).

History

During the Saxon era Halwell was one of the four

burh A burh () or burg was an Old English fortification or fortified settlement. In the 9th century, raids and invasions by Vikings prompted Alfred the Great to develop a network of burhs and roads to use against such attackers. Some were new constr ...

s, or fortified settlements, established in Devon by King Alfred the Great (d.899), King of

Wessex la, Regnum Occidentalium Saxonum , conventional_long_name = Kingdom of the West Saxons , common_name = Wessex , image_map = Southern British Isles 9th century.svg , map_caption = S ...

from 871 to 899, to defend against invasion by Vikings. At that time the other three were Exeter, Pilton (near Barnstaple) and

Lydford Lydford, sometimes spelled Lidford, is a village, once an important town, in Devon, north of Tavistock on the western fringe of Dartmoor in the West Devon district. There is an electoral ward with the same name which includes Princetown. The p ...

. According to the Burghal Hidage (an early 10th Century document describing all burhs then functioning), Halwell's town wall was 1,237 feet long and the garrison consisted of 300 men who could be drawn from the surrounding district in the event of an invasion. However, by the close of the 11th century its status as a burh had been transferred to

, 5 miles to the north and situated on the

River Dart The River Dart is a river in Devon, England, that rises high on Dartmoor and flows for to the sea at Dartmouth. Name Most hydronyms in England derive from the Brythonic language (from which the river's subsequent names ultimately derive fr ...

, probably because it was better placed for trade at a time when the Viking threat had diminished, after which the significance of Halwell greatly decreased.

Descent of the manor

According to

William Pole William Pole FRS FRSE MICE (22 April 181430 December 1900) was an English engineer, astronomer, musician and an authority on Whist. Life He was born in Birmingham on 22 April 1814, the son of Thomas Pole. Pole was apprenticed as an engineer t ...

(died 1635), from the reign of King Edward I the manor was the seat of the de Halgawell family,Pole, p.292 which resided there for several generations. Sir John Halgawell (or Halliwell) was Steward of the Duchy of Cornwall under King Henry VIII (1485-1509), and Admiral of the Fleet and a Knight of the Body. His son was Richard Halgawell, the last in the male line, who married Joan Norbury, daughter and heiress of John Norbury of Stoke in Surrey. His daughter and heiress was Joan Halgawell, who married

Edmund Braye, 1st Baron Braye Edmund Braye, 1st Baron Braye (or Bray; c. 1484 – 18 October 1539), of Eaton Bray in Bedfordshire, was an English peer. Origins He was the son of John Braye lord of the manor of Eaton Bray in Bedfordshire; his younger brother was Sir Edwar ...

(c.1484-1539) of

Eaton Bray Eaton Bray is a village and civil parish in Bedfordshire, England. It is situated about three miles south-west of the town of Dunstable and is part of a semi-rural area which extends into the parish of Edlesborough. In the 2011 United Kingdom ...

Bedfordshire Bedfordshire (; abbreviated Beds) is a ceremonial county in the East of England. The county has been administered by three unitary authorities, Borough of Bedford, Central Bedfordshire and Borough of Luton, since Bedfordshire County Council ...

. Her eventual heiress and inheritor of the manor of Halwell was her second of six daughters, namely Elizabeth Bray (d.1573), who married Sir Ralph Verney (1509-1546), of Pendley in Tring, Hertfordshire, and of

Middle Claydon Middle Claydon is a village and civil parish in the Aylesbury Vale district of Buckinghamshire, England. The village is about south of Buckingham and about west of Winslow. The toponym "Claydon" is derived from the Old English for "clay hill" ...

, Buckinghamshire, whose monumental brasses with heraldic shields survive in the Church of St. John the Baptist,

Aldbury Aldbury () is a village and civil parish in Hertfordshire, England, near the borders of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire in the Bulbourne valley close to Ashridge Park. The nearest town is Tring. Uphill from the narrow valley are the Brid ...

, Hertfordshire.see images
/ref> On Elizabeth Bray's robe are engraved the arms of Verney (quarterly of four) impaling Bray (quarterly of four: 1&4: Bray modern; 2&3: Bray ancient, all charged with an inescutcheon of pretence of four quarters: 1: ''Or, on a bend gules three goats argent'' (Hallighwell); 2: ''Sable, a chevron between three bull's heads cabossed argent'' (Norbury); 3: ''Gules, a fess chequy argent and sable between six crosslets formée fitchée argent'' (Boteler); 4: ''Or, two bends gules'' (Sudeley).

References

{{reflist Villages in South Hams Former civil parishes in Devon