England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Bow St Bartholomew

The Parish

The parish of Bow lies almost centrally within Devon and roughly 7 miles west of the market town of Crediton. Bow sits on and mostly south of the A3072 road which crosses mid-Devon from Crediton to North Tawton. Bow is a fairly lately created village set upon a main road with the intention of developing as a market town and replacing the original settlement of Nymet Tracey. A market was granted in 1258 and ran for many years before lapsing due to competition from Crediton. What remains is till a substantial village with properties lining the A3072 and parallel to the infant River Yeo, it sits upon the latter's eastern banks. Little remains of Nymet Tracet besides the parish church and a few cottages whilst Broad Nymet has almost totally disappeared. Like most Devon parishes pastoral farming dominated the economy as it still does today, early gazetteers state, however, that as much as 40% of the parish acreage was "waste or common". Modern developments have come to the parish, disappeared and been reborn with the construction, Beching closure and reopening of the branch line from Exeter to Okehampton but Bow no longer has a station. The infant Yeo drains the parish northwards before meeting the Taw and turning back to a northwesterly direction headed for Barnstaple and the joint estuaries of Taw & Torridge which feed into the outer Bristol Channel. Bow sits on rising ground climbing from 100 metres above the sea at the Yeo crossing to 130 metres to the east, the landscape is rolling with heights of 180 metres reached to the northwest. Bow parish was fairly typically sized for its area covering just over 2,300 acres and supporting a population of close to 950 parishioners. There was no sight of Bow in Domesday but Nymet Tracey merited an entry, held by Bishop Georffrey of Coutances it offered 7 ploughs backed by typical meadows and woodland, in its turn Broad Nymet also was listed and held by Baldwin the Sheriff with a further 4 ploughs, meadows and pastures.

The Church

St Bartholomew's church stands in Nymet Tracey a mile to the southeast of the main concentration of its parishioners, Despite a medieval origin retained in the Perpendicular western tower much of the fabric is the result of thorough Victorian restoration. Whilst the rather fragile-looking tower is probably 15th century it sits on an earlier tower arch of perhaps a century earlier. Much else in the church dates from one of two major restorations in the 19th century, thus would be unrecognisable to the participants in these marriages. The chancel in particular has been rebuilt on two separate occasions in both the 1862 and 1889 restorations. A few original windows have been left notably in the northern aisle but many are merely copies in the same original style. Most of these windows were renewed in local Hatherleigh stone during the later Victorian work. along with virtually the entire roof, at the same event all of the pews and galleries were removed internally. A substantial car park sits north and opposite to the church offering room for many vehicles and a leisurely visit. Sadly for the photographer all of the favoured southern aspects are removed by a thick stretch of mature trees, the proximity of adjacent cottages to the north also limits whatever landscape views to a view along the church, a challenge for the photographer.