Dawlish Devon Family History Guide

Dawlish is an Ancient Parish in the county of Devon.

Other places in the parish include: Westwood, Cockwood, Cofton, Holcombe, Middlewood, St Mark, and St Mark’s.

Alternative names: Dawlish with St Mark’s and Holcombe

Parish church:

Parish registers begin:

  • Parish registers: 1627
  • Bishop’s Transcripts: 1609

Nonconformists include: Baptist, Christians, Independent/Congregational, Presbyterian, and Wesleyan Methodist.

Adjacent Parishes

Parish History

The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales 1870

DAWLISH, a town and a parish in Newton-Abbot district, Devon. The town stands at the mouth of a rivulet of its own name, on the coast, and on the South Devon railway, 3 miles NNE of Teignmouth. It was known, at Domesday, as Doelis or Doules; it remained, till about 1790, a small fishing village, ½ a mile up the rivulet; and it is now a handsome, picturcsque, and fashionable watering-place, extending down to the beach, and presenting three sides of a quadraugular area to the sea. It partly occupies a fine valley, flanked by heights; and partly rejoices in a grand cove, about 1½ mile wide, overhung by tunnelled precipices, and terminated on one side by the Langstone Cliffs, on the other by the fantastic rocks called the Parson and Clerk. It is a seat of petty sessions and a coast-guard station; and has a head post office, a railway station with telegraph, three hotels, two churches, three dissenting chapels, public baths, assembly rooms, billiard and reading rooms, circulating libraries, a literary society, and a pleasure fair on Easter-Monday. The railway station is ornamental; and the railway viaduct across the rivulet has an Egyptian character. The parish church, at the upper end of the town, was rebuilt in 1825, at a cost of nearly £6,000; and St. Mark’s, in Brunswick Place, was built in 1850. The erection of a promenade pier was proposed in 1866. Pop. of the town, 3,505. Houses, 680. The parish includes also the hamlets of Cockwood, Middlewood, and Westwood. Acres, 5,512; of which 495 are water. Real property, £20,127; of which £324 are in gas-works. Pop., 4,014. Houses, 795. The property is subdivided. The manor belonged at Domesday to the see of Exeter; and belongs now to the Dean and Chapter. The railway here traverses alternately five short tunnels and four spaces over-hung by lofty cliffs; and was momentarily overwhelmed, at one point, in 1853 by the fall of a mass of about 4,000 tons, which carried a piece of it into the sea. The living is a vicarage, united with the p. curacy of St. Marks, in the diocese of Exeter. Value, £256. Patrons, the Dean and Chapter of Exeter.

Source: The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales [Wilson, John M]. A. Fullarton & Co. N. d. c. [1870-72].

Administration

  • County: Devon
  • Civil Registration District: Newton Abbot
  • Probate Court: Court of the Peculiars of the Dean and Chapter of Exeter
  • Diocese: Exeter
  • Rural Deanery: Pre-1848 – None, Post-1847 – Kenn
  • Poor Law Union: Newton Abbot
  • Hundred: Exminster
  • Province: Canterbury