England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Huish St James the Less

The Parish

The parish of Huish lies in western Devon roughly midway between Bideford & Okehampton. Huish sits approximate 13 miles south of the port of Bideford and 12 north of the market town of Okehampton. Huish is a tiny place, little more than a group of farms and cottages gathered around the church, which lies immediately east of the A386 road which connects those two places. Like most of Devon's rural parishes dairy farming was the predominant farming income of Huish, supplemented in this case by extraction of the local clay for both pipe and pot manufacture. Huish sits within a side valley off that of the River Torridge, a tributary, the Little Mere River, soon delivers water to the Torridge whch makes its way north to reach the Irish Sea through Bideford and its joint estuary with the Taw. Huish is sited at around 80 metres above the sea in rolling countryside, the ridge separating the Little Mere's valley with that of the Torridge, continues to rise southwards reaching almost 130 metres before Meeth. Devon has many small parishes and Huish was one of those, covering about 1,100 acres it would have supported around 150 parishioners. In Domesday time Huish was shared between on Gotshelm & Odo the son of Gamalin, collectively the assets amounted to 6 ploughs together with usual meadows, pastures and woodland.

The Church

St James' church forms the focal point of the small hamlet that is Huish sitting at the entrance to the estate of Heanton Satchville, a resurrected mansion following a fire. Little of the medieval remains of St James only the unbuttressed western tower harks back to those times. It is dated to either the last part of the 15th or early part of the 16th centuries and is Perpendicular in style. The remainder of the church is a Victorian rebuild of 1873 and thus would not be recognised by the participants in these marriages. The Victorian re-builders chose the slightly earlier Decorated style of the early 14th century for their replacement, perhaps indicative of that which was here before. The whole clearly underwhelmed Pevsner who's description is a mere 2 lines of description. The lane leading to the church is merely signed "Huish Farm" from the A386 and thus may easily be missed, it leads passing that farm to the churchyard and the entrance to Heaton Satchville, a picket fence surrounds the churchyard with a small parking area outside the lychgate allowing entry. Whilst the church is largely hidden behind trees from the approaches, once within the churchyard there are few obstacles for the photographer.