Bicton (Devon)
Bicton is a village and parish Civil and seat of the former Manor of Bicton in the district of East Devon in the county of Devon in southwest England, near the town of Budleigh Salterton . The parish is bordered clockwise from the north by the parishes Colaton Raleigh , Otterton , East Budleigh and Woodbury . In the United Kingdom Census 2001 , Bicton had 280 inhabitants. Much of the parish is Bicton Park , the historic home of the Rolle family, and Bicton Common, adjacent to Woodbury Common , is to the west. The village of Yettington on the southern boundary of the district also belongs to the Parish .
history
Bicton is mentioned as Bechetone in the Domesday Book of 1086 . It belonged to William Porter, who probably received it for his services as guardian of the gate of Exeter Castle and the prison there. The manor changed over to several families until Sir Thomas Denys (1559-1613) left two daughters as joint heirs. The older was Anne Denys, who brought Bicton into the property of the Rolles through her marriage to Sir Henry Rolle († 1616) from Stevenstone .
The Bicton Gardens were laid out around 1735, presumably to a design by André Le Nôtre , but most of the work was carried out by John Rolle, 1st Baron Rolle at the beginning of the 19th century. This included the construction of a pond that was dug by French prisoners of war in 1810, the construction of the arboretum in 1830 and the well-known Araucaria Avenue in 1842. An orangery was built in 1806 and a tropical house around 1825 . The crenellated octagonal Chinese tower was built in 1839.
John Rolle died childless in 1842 at the age of 86. After marrying his second wife Louisa Trefusis, however, he chose her nephew, Mark George Kerr Trefusis , then six, as his heir. This was the younger brother of the 20th Baron Clinton and changed his surname to Rolle at the request of John Rolles. When he died in 1907 without a male heir, the inheritance passed to his nephew Charles Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis, 21st Baron Clinton (1863-1957).
He initially rented the mansion and later sold it together with the surrounding land to the Devon County Council, which used it as an agricultural school from which the current Bicton College emerged , which today cultivates an area of 200 hectares and has 231 boarding students. The Bicton Gardens were renovated by the Baron in the 1950s and opened to the public in 1963. The 22nd Baron donated the botanical gardens to a charity in 1986, which in 1998 sold them to Simon and Valerie Lister. The Listers turned the 25 hectare property into a commercial visitor attraction called Bicton Park Botanical Gardens. The rest of the land of the former manor still belongs to Baron Clinton and is administered by the Clinton Devon Estates. This includes 6,900 hectares of leased farmland, 1,900 hectares of forest and 1,100 hectares of the East Devon Pebblebed Heaths . A horse racing track, the Bicton Arena, is also part of the property.
St Mary's Church
In 1850, Lady Louisa Rolle commemorated her deceased husband by building a new church on the family estate. This was built not far from the old church, which was partially demolished. The former choir of the old church was converted into a mausoleum for the Rolle family by Augustus Pugin . The mausoleum, which is not open to the public, is laid with floor tiles from Minton's, has a barrel vault and windows designed by Pugin to the west and east. A monument for Rolle on the north wall was made by George Myers . The mausoleum also contains the baroque marble table tomb, in which Denys Rolle, who died in 1638, along with his wife and son are buried, which WG Hoskins described as "wonderful". Around 50 years before the partial demolition, the topographer John Swete made a drawing of the old church with watercolors and described it in his journal in 1795 as " picturesque ".
The church from 1850 was designed by the architect John Hayward of Exeter. Hoskins called this church "uninteresting," although it was later referred to as an early example of the ideals of the Cambridge Camden Society in Devon.
Landmarks
Bicton Obelisk on the edge of the park was built in 1747 by Henry Rolle, 1st Baron Rolle (1708–1750) as a landmark for the gardens that can be seen from afar.
In 1743, Rolle also had the four-sided pillar built at the intersection between Bicton and Otterton. This serves as a signpost to the various places along the four-way roads and also has biblical inscriptions.
Obelisk, erected in 1747
Brick pillars at the intersection of the Bicton and Otterton parish, both owned by the Rolle family
Bicton Woodland Railway in the Bicton Park Botanical Gardens
Bicton Park Botanical Gardens
Bicton Park Botanical Gardens is a landmark in the southern part of the former Bicton manor. The landscaped park includes historic greenhouses, a country museum, the Bicton Woodland Railway , mini golf, children's playgrounds, a restaurant and a shop. The gardens, which began around 1730, are listed as Grade I on the Statutory List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest .
The four greenhouses at Bicton Gardens were built to recreate the natural environment of plants from different continents. The tropical house from the 1820s is a curved building, the windows of which are composed of 18,000 small glass panels. An orchid named after the park ( Lemboglossum bictoniense ) bloomed in this building for the first time in 1836 . In another building, cacti and other succulents thrive in a naturalistically reproduced desert landscape.
Individual evidence
- ^ Map of Devon Parishes . Devon County Council. Archived from the original on November 2, 2013. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved June 20, 2013.
- ↑ Helen Harris: A Handbook of Devon Parishes . Halsgrove, Tiverton 2004, ISBN 1-84114-314-6 , pp. 19 .
- ^ John Morris, Frank Thorn, Caroline Thorn: Domesday book (= History from the sources. Volume 9 , parts 1 and 2). Phillimore, Chichester 1985, ISBN 0-85033-492-6 .
- ↑ a b c d Bridget Cherry, Nikolaus Pevsner : Devon (= The Buildings of England ). 2nd Edition. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 2001, ISBN 0-14-071050-7 , pp. 172-174 .
- ^ Bicton College - About . Retrieved June 9, 2016.
- ^ Bicton College - Accommodation . Retrieved June 9, 2016.
- ^ Clinton Devon Estates Infographic . Clinton Devon Estates. Retrieved June 8, 2016.
- ^ A b W. G Hoskins: Devon (= A New Survey of England ). David and Charles, Newton Abbot 1972, ISBN 0-7153-5577-5 , Bicton-Bideford, pp. 335 .
- ^ A b John Swete: Travels in Georgian Devon. The illustrated journals of the Reverend John Swete, 1789-1800 . Ed .: Todd Gray, Margery M. Rowe. tape 2 . Devon Books, Tiverton 1999, ISBN 1-85522-648-0 , pp. 140-145 .
