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A brief history of Bratton Fleming

Part 4: The 19th century – a time of change

As with much of the country the 19th century was a time of great activity and change in the parish. In 1818 a former private chaplain to HRH William Fredrick Duke of Gloucester, William Gimingham, was appointed Rector. After a relatively uneventful early incumbency Gimingham started to show those signs of the eccentricity for which many English parsons have been famous. During hymn singing Gimingham would often leave the church and sit on a tombstone smoking his pipe and drinking gin and water – his dog, which usually accompanied him to church, would presumably leave its accustomed place under the altar to join him. Many villagers believed, and attested, that Parson Gimingham possessed occult power particularly to command and identify thieves and wrongdoers. Sadly these powers do not appear to have prevented him being robbed by his own servants and he died in poverty after the living was sequestrated. Gimingham died in 1838 and was the last Rector to be buried in front of the altar of the church.

In the early 19th century Bratton was much smaller than it is today with no houses above where Northgate House now stands only the 2000 acres of the open moorland of Bratton Down; the population was around 500 and there were several pubs or inns in the parish including the only remaining one, the White Hart. In many respects, particularly in the appearance of the surrounding countryside, the parish had changed very little over several centuries.

The mid 1800’s however saw a rapid succession of changes. In the space of a few years from 1838, Bratton Down was finally completely enclosed, turnpikes were constructed from South Molton to Combe Martin and Barnstaple to Bratton, and a new Rector Humphrey Senhouse Pinder arrived.

Under the Bratton Down Enclosure Act the surrounding local landowners received various portions of land – the largest, nearly 590 acres going to the Lord of the Manor, Sir Arthur Chichester of Youlston. In return for the loss of their possible rights to common land people of the parish accepted (with little choice one suspects as for many their landlord was a beneficiary under enclosure) turbery rights, quarrying rights and a village ‘playground’ (now the recreation field).

The Rector (from 1838), Humphrey Pinder, and his wife Harriett (who died very young) were an energetic and hardworking couple. The church and its various properties were dilapidated and Pinder raised a mortgage of £1,500 towards the estimated £2000 for repairs. Among the works carried out were a substantial rebuilding of the church chancel and the construction of a new Rectory (now Bracken House). Pinder was also a prime mover in the establishment of the National School (now the village hall) in 1841. In 1913 Bratton was described as having the ‘best school buildings in Devonshire’ and giving ‘the best education of any elementary school in the county’.