Otterton is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

East Devon East Devon is a local government district in Devon, England. Its council has been based in Honiton since February 2019, and the largest town is Exmouth (with a population of 34,432 at the time of the 2011 census). The district was formed ...

, England. The parish lies on the

English Channel The English Channel, "The Sleeve"; nrf, la Maunche, "The Sleeve" ( Cotentinais) or ( Jèrriais), ( Guernésiais), "The Channel"; br, Mor Breizh, "Sea of Brittany"; cy, Môr Udd, "Lord's Sea"; kw, Mor Bretannek, "British Sea"; nl, Het Ka ...

and is surrounded clockwise from the south by the parishes of

East Budleigh East Budleigh is a small village in East Devon, England. The villages of Yettington, Colaton Raleigh, and Otterton lie to the west, north and east of East Budleigh, with the seaside town of Budleigh Salterton about two miles south. Until th ...

, Bicton,

Colaton Raleigh Colaton Raleigh is a village and civil parish in East Devon, England. The parish is surrounded clockwise from the north by the parishes of Aylesbeare, Newton Poppleford and Harpford, Otterton, Bicton, Woodbury and a small part of Farringdo ...

Newton Poppleford and Harpford Newton Poppleford and Harpford is a civil parish in East Devon, England. It is surrounded clockwise from the north by the parishes of Ottery St Mary, Sidmouth, Otterton, Colaton Raleigh and Aylesbeare. The parish includes the large village of ...

and

Sidmouth Sidmouth () is a town on the English Channel in Devon, South West England, southeast of Exeter. With a population of 12,569 in 2011, it is a tourist resort and a gateway to the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site. A large part of the town h ...

. In 2001 its population was 700, compared to 622 a hundred years earlier. At the 2011 census the population had reduced to 656. ''Otterton'' is part of Raleigh

electoral ward A ward is a local authority area, typically used for electoral purposes. In some countries, wards are usually named after neighbourhoods, thoroughfares, parishes, landmarks, geographical features and in some cases historical figures connected to ...

whose total population at the above census was 2,120.

Village

The village is located on the east bank of the River Otter, east of the B3178 road and the village of

. It is about a mile inland of Ladram Bay, on the

Jurassic Coast The Jurassic Coast is a World Heritage Site on the English Channel coast of southern England. It stretches from Exmouth in East Devon to Studland Bay in Dorset, a distance of about , and was inscribed on the World Heritage List in mid-Decembe ...

. It was first settled by the Saxons and because of its favourable location and rich resources was by 1000 AD the centre of one of the major rural communities in Devon. Burials in the churchyard ceased in 1986. The village, which includes cob and

thatched Thatching is the craft of building a roof with dry vegetation such as straw, water reed, sedge (''Cladium mariscus''), rushes, heather, or palm branches, layering the vegetation so as to shed water away from the inner roof. Since the bulk of ...

cottages, is described at some length by Pevsner as "an instructive example of local building from the 16th century onwards". It is the location of Otterton Mill, a

watermill A watermill or water mill is a mill that uses hydropower. It is a structure that uses a water wheel or water turbine to drive a mechanical process such as milling (grinding), rolling, or hammering. Such processes are needed in the production ...

and craft centre. The Budleigh Salterton Railway, which was open from 1897 to 1967, ran along the valley of the River Otter. The station known as East Budleigh was closer to Otterton, being just over the river from the village. The platform and station building survive as a private house.

Parish

Otterton civil parish is bounded by the coast on the east and the River Otter on the west; these two bounds meet at the mouth of the river, just east of the town of

Budleigh Salterton Budleigh Salterton is a seaside town on the coast in East Devon, England, south-east of Exeter. It lies within the East Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and forms much of the electoral ward of Budleigh, whose ward population at t ...

, after passing through the Otter Estuary Nature Reserve - a

Site of Special Scientific Interest A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Great Britain or an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI) in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom and Isle ...

. The northern parish boundary leaves the river near

and swings south to meet the coast at Peak Hill, west of

. About ¾ of a mile west along the coast from Peak Hill is High Peak, a 157-metre high cliff. Excavations into the earthworks on top of this have shown habitation in the

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age ( Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly ...

Roman period The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post- Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediter ...

and in the 6th–8th centuries AD. Many of these earthworks have been lost to the sea by erosion. The cliffs below High Peak have yielded rare fossils from the

Middle Triassic In the geologic timescale, the Middle Triassic is the second of three epochs of the Triassic period or the middle of three series in which the Triassic system is divided in chronostratigraphy. The Middle Triassic spans the time between Ma an ...

age, for example Mastodonsaurus.

Manor

The church, dedicated to St Michael, belonged to the monastery of

Mont Saint-Michel Mont-Saint-Michel (; Norman: ''Mont Saint Miché''; ) is a tidal island and mainland commune in Normandy, France. The island lies approximately off the country's north-western coast, at the mouth of the Couesnon River near Avranches and ...

at the time of the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

in 1086. After passing through ownership by Syon Abbey in the 15th century, the manor with the

advowson Advowson () or patronage is the right in English law of a patron (avowee) to present to the diocesan bishop (or in some cases the ordinary if not the same person) a nominee for appointment to a vacant ecclesiastical benefice or church living, a ...

was bought by

Richard Duke Richard Duke (13 June 1658 – 11 February 1711) was an English clergyman and poet, associated with the Tory writers of the Restoration era. Life He was born in London, son of Richard Duke, and was admitted to Westminster School in 1670. He wa ...

(c. 1515–1572) at the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Duke converted some of the monastic buildings into a mansion, part of which still exists to the north of the present-day church, which was rebuilt in 1869–71 at the sole expense of Lady Rolle to the design of

Benjamin Ferrey Benjamin Ferrey FSA FRIBA (1 April 1810–22 August 1880) was an English architect who worked mostly in the Gothic Revival. Family Benjamin Ferrey was the youngest son of Benjamin Ferrey Snr (1779–1847), a draper who became Mayor of Christc ...

. In 1786 the manor of Otterton, with several other manors, was sold by the heirs of the Duke family for the huge sum of £72,000 to Denys Rolle (1725–1797) of nearby Bicton, and of Stevenstone, the largest landowner in Devon.

References

External links

Discovering OttertonOtterton Village Website
{{authority control Villages in Devon