Whiddon is an historic estate in the parish of

Chagford Chagford is a market town and civil parish on the north-east edge of Dartmoor, in Devon, England, close to the River Teign and the A382, 4 miles (6 km) west of Moretonhampstead. The name is derived from ''chag'', meaning gorse or broom, an ...

Devon Devon ( ; historically also known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel to the north, Somerset and Dorset to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Cornwall to the west ...

, England. The

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 usually held the lord's manorial courts, communal mea ...

, now known as Whiddon Park House, survives as a remnant of the larger 16th-century mansion house of the Whiddon family.Cherry & Pevsner, p. 251. The house displays the date 1649 inscribed above the inner doorway. The manor house is now the property of the

National Trust The National Trust () is a heritage and nature conservation charity and membership organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Trust was founded in 1895 by Octavia Hill, Sir Robert Hunter and Hardwicke Rawnsley to "promote the ...

and is let for a nominal rent, but on a full repairing and insuring lease expiring on 17 January 2079. The deer park, which is bounded by a wall built of massive

granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...

blocks at the entrance to the

Teign Gorge 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 ...

, was built by Sir

John Whiddon Sir John Whiddon (died 27 January 1576) of Whiddon in the parish of Chagford in Devon, was a Justice of the Queen's Bench from 4 October 1553 to his death on 27 January 1576, during the reigns of Queen Mary I and Queen Elizabeth I. Personal life ...

(died 1576), a

Justice of the King's Bench Justice of the King's Bench, or Justice of the Queen's Bench during the reign of a female monarch, was a puisne judicial position within the Court of King's Bench, under the Chief Justice. The King's Bench was a court of common law which modern ...

. His monument survives in St Michael's Church, Chagford.Cherry & Pevsner, p. 250.

References

;Sources * Cherry, Bridget & Pevsner, Nikolaus, ''The Buildings of England: Devon''. Yale University Press, 2004. {{ISBN, 978-0-300-09596-8.

References

Further reading