Cornworthy

from

A Topographical Dictionary of England

by

 Samuel Lewis (1831)

Transcript copyright Mel Lockie (Sep 2016)

CORNWORTHY, a parish in the hundred of COLERIDGE, county of DEVON, 4¼ miles (S. E. by S.) from Totness, containing 607 inhabitants. The living is a discharged vicarage, in the archdeaconry of Totness, and diocese of Exeter, rated in the king's books at £10, endowed with £200 royal bounty, and in the patronage of the Rev. Charles Barter. The church is dedicated to St. Peter. An ancient priory for seven nuns of the order of St. Augustine, said to have been founded by the ancestors of the family of Edgecombe, and valued at the time of the dissolution at £63 per annum, formerly stood here: two arched gateways that belonged to it still remain. The parish, mentioned as a borough in old records, contains several acres of good productive orchard ground. The river Harborne, separating it from Ashprington, on the north, falls into the Dart, which then forms the line of separation from Stoke-Gabriel, for a short distance, making it a kind of peninsula. At Tuckerhay, a hamlet in this parish, is a flax-manufactory. There is a school for poor children, male and female, founded in 1609, by Dame Elizabeth Harris, and endowed by her with land producing about £25 per annum. Sir John Peters bequeathed a small sum from the great tithes of the parish, to be distributed to poor people not receiving parochial relief.