Beaford of the Torridge valley is a distance from Great Torrington. The church (All Saints) has only four bells and a tower, one the northside, hones three. It was a Saxon estate, its name meaning "wolves' clearing" where some of a 15th century chapel remains. Beaford and Landcross parish in the Shebbear Hundred, the Archdeaconry of Barnstaple, and the diocese of Exeter. Upcott Farm, the property and residence of Thomas W. Snell, Esq., had anciently a chapel attached, but no traces of it are now to be seen. The ancient structure of a church is that of St. George. Families Pencombe, Blagdon, Pincombe/Pinkham, Goodwin, Stabledon, Fort, Bowden, Bendle, Peardon, Stafford, Heard, Scott, Milton, lived in Beaford or Honiton-Molton or Hacche of South Molton.
Victoria Bridge was once called Dinham's Bridge- as a branch mostly from Lincolnshire. John Malet 1512-1570, son of Sir Baldwin and Anne Hache m. Margaret Monke, daughter of Humphrey Monke. In 1641/2 82 adult males signed the Protestation returns. Beeford, Dunnington, Collina
BEAFORD, a parish and pleasant village on the eastern acclivity of the Torridge valley, 6 miles S.E. of Great Torrington, is in Torrington union, county court district and deanery, Great Torrington petty sessional division, Torrington polling district of North Devon, Shebbear hundred, and Bamstaple archdeaconry. It had 619 inhabitants (282 males, 387 females) in 1871, living in 125 houses on 3203 acres of land. The parish includes Abbots .Hill, Woolleigh, and Upcott. The Rev. C. W. Furse is lord of the manor, but Woolly or .Woolleigh Barton is a separate manor, 2 miles from the village, belonging to Sir T. D. Acland, and on this estate are remains of an ancient chapel. Upcott Farm, the property and residence of Thomas W. Snell, Esq., had anciently a chapel attached, but no traces of it are now to be seen. The CHURCH (St. George) is an ancient structure in various styles of architecture, and is about to be restored. The south aisle has a fine old carved roof. The tower, with spire, is on the north side, and contains three bells. The font is Norman. The living, a rectory, valued in K.B. at £11 15s. 71/2d, and now at £300, is in the patronage of the Rev. C. Wood, B.A., and incumbency of the Rev. H. J. Marshall, who has a residence, built in 1853. The tithes are commuted at £244 a year, and there are 75 acres of glebe. The BAPTISTS and BIBLE CHRISTIANS have small chapels here. A CHURCH SCHOOL, with teacher's residence, was erected in 1870, on a site given by Miss Arnold, and has an average attendance of 80 pupils. The parish clerk has the free use of a house and six acres of land. [Entries from White's Devonshire 1878]
The Randell family of Kidwelly in Carmarthenshire, from which we are both descended, originated with the arrival there in the late 1700s of a Capt. Francis Randell from Clovelly in Devon, eleven miles from Bideford. As regards the Randells, aside from the entry in the 1581 Lay Subsidy mentioned above, to date just one other 16th century reference to a Clovelly Randell has been found, namely the record of the will of John Randell having been proved in 1593. Queen Elizabeth's reign (1558-1603) was above all the age of Drake. The main centres of naval activities were in South Devon, the home of Drake, Hawkins, Raleigh and other famous sea-dogs. The main exception was Sir Richard Grenville, who was lord of the manor of Bideford, and who manned his transatlantic expeditions to Carolina and Virginia mainly with Bideford seamen. [Hoskins 1954]. In addition to its maritime activities, Devon was at this time becoming a particularly prosperous agricultural county. Wool was a major product, and cloth-making a major industry, including it would seem in the general area of Clovelly, there having been water-powered fulling mills (used for felting and flattening woven cloth) in the neighbouring parish of Hartland as early as the end of the 13th century. Many farms were also involved with cider making, though in the 18th century Clovelly's cider was evidently not very well regarded.
Clovelly had for many years been owned by the Cary family, who had taken possession of it in the 14th century and bought the manor of the heirs of the Giffards who were the most ancient lords of it. George Cary build a massive stone pier, which created the only safe harbour on this merciless coast between Appledore in Devon and Boscastle in Cornwall, leaving the impression of Clovelly as a parish of scattered farms and cottages on the plateau.
In 1646, Hartland, Woolfardisworthy, Parkham, Clovelly, Morwenstow and Kilkhampton numbered 700 and Bideford was struck by the Plague. The Scots were finally defeated at Dunbar in 1650 and the battle of Worcester occurred a yeare later, the final termination of the Civil War in England. In the yeare 1681, Bideford Witches occured, and Clovelly was becoming a part of the port of Bideford recorded in the Bideford port Books of voyages of many years to Swansea, Neath, and Bristol. North Devon's coastal trade was imported by coal from Cornwall and wool from Spain, and Barnstaple and Bideford were connected with Exeter by imported colonial produce, sugar and Newfoundland train oil to Bristol towards the end of the seventeenth century, though its chief cargo was earthenware to South Wales, Bristol and Gloucester. Other outward cargoes at that time were wine for Minehead and Bristol, salt and deals for the South Wales ports, and herrings, "taken at Clovelly," for Plymouth.
Bideford (Lavington) is the only congregational non parochial register dating prior the 17th century. Immigration began in the 16th century, when 'Flemings' figure in the registers of Dartmouth St Saviour, and Walloons came to Plymouth. Those which are particularly relevant in the local context were French refugees from the persecution before and after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 1685, at which period the Devon congregations were formed. Bideford was until 1708 regarded as part of the Port of Barnstaple. The earliest extant coastal port book for Barnstaple is dated 1565. Bideford was also very much involved in the transatlantic fishing expeditions to the Newfoundland Banks in the sixteenth century in search of cod that started up at this time, though the Clovelly fishing vessels were perhaps to small for this trade. A feature of the coal trade, as far as the Welsh ports was concerned, was the size of the vessels. There was also a busy trade in limestone from West Wales to Devon, whose farmers by this time were making much use of lime to counteract the naturally acidic soil in their fields. There were numerous limekilns on or near the coast, including at the harbour at Clovelly. Much limestone was quarried and shipped to these limekilns from places such as Llanmadoc on the Gower Peninsula, but the trade was free of duty, and was largely carried in different ships, so that it rarely features in official records, such as those of the coal and coasting trade. Lime was was brought to America. Clovelly's main connections to the outside world had been by sea for many centuries. By 1765, the main road joining Clovelly appeared between Hartland and Bideford showed trade that had passed to the north. After Francis Randall's move from Clovelly to Carmarthenshire, Francis founded a further sea-going dynasty there - he and a number of his descendants were ship's captains and ship- owners based mainly in Kidwelly, Pembrey and Llanelly well into the 19th century.
In 1789 Clovelly Court, the old manor house of the owners of the parish lands and properties, burnt down. No details have been found of Clovelly's 18th century fishing fleet, which was presumably separate from the set of coasting vessels involved in the coal trade whose movements are recorded in the Port Books or f Pembrey coal shipments. These books and records have enabled us to identify names of a large number of Randell-captained Clovelly ships during the period up to 1721, namely: AGNIS, BLESSING, ELIZABETH, ELIZABETH & JOAN, GRACE, HAPPY COUPLE, JOHN & AGNES, LAMB, MAYFLOWER, PROSPEROUS ENDEAVOUR, RECOVERY, SPEEDWELL and WILLIAM & JOHN.