England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Upottery St Mary

The Parish

The parish of Upottery lies in the extreme east of Devon with only a few yards, historically, of Yarcombe parish separating it from neighbouring Somerset. In 1896, however, the former Devon parish of Churchstanton was transferred to Somerset so from that date Upottery now forms part of the county's border. Upottery is located roughly 5 miles northeast of the market town of Honiton and stands a half mile west of the A303 road which links Exeter through to London. Upottery is a compact junction village with most properties lining the T-junction that forms the notional centre of the village, it sits, as its name suggests, in the upper reaches of the River Otter it stands on flatter ground where a small tributary joins the main flow. Much of Upottery's economy is underpinned by the extensive pastures of the area with both sheep and cattle in abundance, the Otter also provided power for mills both for processing local arable produce and also for processing the wool of the local sheep. Together with locally grown flax Upottery partook notably in the East Devon Serge trade with lace making by the female population also important. Upottery is drained southwestwards by the Otter which passes Honiton and Ottery St Mary to reach the English Channel at Budleigh Salterton. Upottery is sited at around 150 metres above the sea in rolling countryside where land rises northwards towards the Somerset border reaching just over 260 metres in a few spots as the highest local land. Upottery was a large parish covering just under 5,300 acres which would have supported a population of close to 1,000 parishioners, fewer than half of these resident in the village, the balance dispersed in farms and cottages across that acreage. In Domesday times Upottery was a holding of Ralph de Pomeroy offering 11 ploughs, meadows, extensive pastures (as today) and woodland, it also held a mill even in those early times.

The Church

St Mary's church sits on the southern edge of the village just south of where Sandy's Lane joins the main north to south running main street of the village. Whilst St Mary was originally built in the 12th century, a corbel table on its northern wall and some fabric in the chancel survive from the 12th century Norman Romanesque period, it is primarily one of the great church building era of the Perpendicular but then heavily modified during Victorian times. Another part of the early church is the Early English Gothic piscina dateable to c1250. It was the 15th century that saw the church almost totally rebuilt and expanded towards its present footprint, the early 15th century saw the addition of the massive 3-stage western tower in an embattled style typical of this area of the county. Later in the same century the northern aisle was added and both the arcades and tower arch were rebuilt. The 19th century saw 2 phases of renewal, the first in Georgian times in 1827 was concerned mainly with the interior but the second of 1875 was a more thorough, and according to Pevsner, an insensitive piece of work; in between these 2 phases a vestry was added in 1858 and subsequently a new ringing chamber and organ loft were added in 1892.  The main street of the village is of adequate width for on-street parking, the churchyard has thick tree cover both roadside and south of the church leaving only views from north & east for the photographer.