Alwaington parish includes the hamlets of Fairy Cross, Ford, and Woodtown on the Clovelly and Hartland road to Bideford in Shebbear hundred, Barnstaple archdeaconry, and Hartland deanery. The remains of an ancient chapel formerly stood near this mansion, but they have been moved to a more distant part of the grounds. A few smaller owners have estates here. The rivulet Yeo runs through the parish.
'Sowden', now part of the parish of Lympstone a separate manor in 1330 (in the lay subsidy Rolls), lies in a parallel valley south of Lympstone. The name is a corruption of 'south of the down' or Southedon. During Saxon times, villagers kept a look-out for Danish raiders and many times had to flee with their families and cattle up the old drove roads.
William the Conqueror imposed a Norman overlord on Lympstone called Richard, son of Count Gilbert (brother of Baldwin the Sheriff). A William Capra then held from him, an absentee lord, and the manor was held in farm. William de Tracey was one of the four knights who murdered Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. William de Tracey had to give away many of his lands and manors in penance for his act, mainly to churches and monasteries. In 1174 the manor of Lympstone passed with Tracey's daughter Eva to William de Courtenay.
The next family to feature here, after many changes, were the de Albemarles from 1215 (de Alba Mara, d'Aumarle, Damarell, etc.), originally French knights. The de Albemarles also held the manor of Woodbury, and in 1228 the long connection of Lympstone and Woodbury began. In 1251, Reginald de Albamara divided the manor of Lympstone and created the Manor of Lympstone Rectory who were entrepreneurs from Westminster / Exeter who like the Courtenays tried to establish a town in the 1288 burgess. They used Lympstone church, for the church of Woodbury had passed from them in 1205 to Otterton, thence to the monastery of St. Michel. The eldest sister took Lympstone; she married a Bonville of Shute.
Newton Ferrers by the east of Plymouth included Torr and fishing from Southampton. The manor of Newton anciently belonged to the Ferrers family, whose co-heiress carried it in marriage to Lord St. John. It afterwards passed to the Bonville, Copleston, Hele, and other families. Once there stood the ancient chapel of St. Toly (Olave) and the Holy Cross church has a tower and five bells.
In the Wars of the Roses, father, son and grandson perished, leaving the one-year old baby Cecily Bonville the richest heiress in England and was married off to the stepson of Edward IV-Thomas Grey, then Marquis of Dorset. Lympstone was Parliamentarian and opposed Courtenays. A wide view over the estuary to the Haldon Hills and up the river to Exeter.
Sowden became part of the manor of Nutwell, subsequently of Lympstone, in 1357, when the manor was given to Sir John Dynham by charter. The Dynham family held the manor of Nutwell and Nutwell Court from about 1327. There was a fortified castle there and from about 1371, a private chapel.
Lympstone was part of the marriage settlement made to his granddaughter-in-law, Frances Brandon, mother of Lady Jane Grey. When it was sold in 1557 to John Prideaux of Nutwell, Sergean-at-Law, Ralph Lane, who came from Lympstone, a soldier and equerry of the Queen, went on Ralegh's second expedition to the New World in 1585, and founded a colony on Roanoke Island amidst great hardship and deprivation. From Bideford in North Devon in 1585, Sir Richard Grenville returned from Roanoke, the island off the coast of Carolina. The overseas trade handled by the port was large even before Queen Elizabeth granted a Charter for trade with Virginia and Carolina, which had come about by the foresight, energy and daring of Devon men like Raleigh, Grenville, Drake and the Gilberts. There was a tremendous traffic in the Newfoundland cod trade, which started at the end of the 16th century, and went on until the end of the mid-18th century. The bulk of this trade was with the west country ports, and, again, Bideford had a very great share, for in 1700 no fewer than 28 Bideford vessels with a tonnage of 3860 were engaged in it, compared with Barnstaple's six ships.
Parkham (St. James) in the union of Bideford hundred of Shebbear and Great Torrington embrace Lundy Isle, Clovelly, Hartland Point, Bideford Bar- there, Bableigh, in the parish, was long held by the family of Risdon.