The role of Parish Councils was defined by the 1972 Local Government Act. This, along with other legislation, forms the structure under which all Parish Councils operate today.
The term of office of a Parish Councillor is 4 years, and Councils are elected en bloc – the next election will take place in May 2027. There are 8 seats on Ideford Parish Council and the Chairperson and Vice Chairperson are elected each year at the meeting in May. Periodically there may be an option to join the Council as a co-opted Councillor if a seat becomes vacate between elections. Currently there is one vacancy.
Ideford Parish Council raises money through the ‘precept’ which is collected from Ideford residents by Teignbridge District Council, along with the council tax. This is then paid to Ideford Parish Council to provide various facilities. Over recent years, the precept has been spent on various items including the insurance, The Millennium Green, Sustainable Ideford and the grass cutting in central Ideford. Grants are provided, one of which goes towards the Parish Newsletter.
The Parish Council also supports other organisations in the Parish, applying for funding to help them carry out capital purchase or refurbishment projects. Between 2014 and 2018 over £35000 was applied for and awarded in support of such projects.
Representatives from the local Police Team and our County and District Councillors liaise closely with the Parish Council to resolve any problems that arise or to give advice when needed. The Parish Council has representatives on the Village Hall Management Committee, the Millennium Green Committee, the Parochial Church Council and on the Feoffees Charities Committee. A Councillor represents Ideford with the Teignbridge Association of Local Councils.
The Parish Council hold 10 meetings each year, which are held in the Village Hall on the second Thursday of each month (except January and August unless there is urgent business to be discussed). Additional meetings may also be called to discuss Planning Applications if a decision is required outside the usual meeting timescale.
Ideford is in the Kingsteignton East Ward of Teignbridge District Council.
What do parish councils do?
Community Representation
We try to improve the quality of life in the local area by identifying needs and working to address them through projects, partnerships and consultation with Teignbridge District Council, the police, health services and other agencies
Providing Services
Litter Bins: We provide and maintain litter bins in public areas. Footpaths and Rights of Way: We maintain and improve public footpaths and bridleways Bus Shelters: We provide and maintain bus shelters.
Support
We are consulted on planning applications within our area and express our views to our local authority. We play a role in shaping the long-term development of the parish by participating in the development plan process.
A brief history of Ideford
The eastern boundary of the village follows a Roman road from Exeter to Teign. There are no recorded archaeological excavations in the parish and no visible trace of any building before Norman times. A carved door lintel which was found buried under the site of the chancel when it was added has been dated c.1100. (It is now incorporated into the stonework on the south wall of the chancel). Which indicates there was a Norman church and during the time of William the Conqueror, the Domesday Book of 1087 records that the manor, probably dating from Saxon times, was held by Nicolas the Head Crossbowman and later, under Edward the Confessor, by Osric, though where the Manor House stood can only be guessed. Nicolas had eight free, seven semi-free and four serf tenants in a total population of 120. The area of the manor was about 1000 acres and it is now about 1300 acres.
Lordships of the manor in some settlements changed hands fairly frequently, either by collateral inheritance or by a need to sell. In 1242 Ideford was held by a minor heiress who married a Fitzpaine and that Robert (of that name) sold it 60 years later (for about £130) to Sir Gilbert Knovil. After various marriages the estate devolved upon Sir John Arundell of Lanherne in Cornwall and his family held it until 1550, when Sir Humphrey Arundell was executed on Tower Hill for having led the revolt against the 1549 Prayer Book in English. The crown, having taken over the manor, presented it to Sir Peter Carew who sold it forthwith to George Southcote of Bovey Tracey, from whom it passed in turn about the year 1750 to the sixth Baron Clifford of Chudleigh, in whose family it has remained.
Olchard: Well Farm in the middle ages was a dependency of Torre Abbey, but the present building is of the seventeenth century; after the dissolution of the monastic establishments, it was part of the dowry of Elizabeth Martyn of Lyndridge (her mother gave the flagon and alms-dish to the Church), when in 1653 she married Thomas Clifford, MP for Ashburton, who became the first Baron Clifford of Chudleigh in 1672. Underhayes is of a similar age and Coombe Holdridge was also held by the Abbot of Torre.
Norman Church; the first documentary evidence is a Taxation Roll of 1291, when Walter was already Rector (date of his institution is unknown). The flourishing wool trade in the fifteenth century saw additions to or the rebuilding of many churches and Ideford then acquired (1460) it’s tower and north aisle. In 1780 a gallery was added only to be removed in 1845-50 during a general refurbishment which included extending the aisle to the present chancel steps and remodeling of the nave windows. The last additions came in 1883 when the vestry, organ chamber and chancel were added. The mediaeval wagon roof has remained unaltered and it is remarkable for the celure, or gloria, the decorated band of carved and painted woodwork, which originally marked the division between nave and chancel.
All the stone came from the red quarry near Ideford Arch, which was built of the same stone in 1810.
In the Domesday Book the population of Ideford was 120. In 1620 it had risen to 200, despite peaks and troughs corresponding with, the flourishing of the wool trade and various plagues and pestilences. During the Black Death the Rector Robert de Mouthcombe died in 1349 and was replaced by Nicholas Legat, who was instituted on the 29th May of the same year. Before the end of the year he died. A new Rector, Thomas Andrew de Camelforde was instituted on the 21st February 1350 and later moved to St Mary Steps in Exeter. It is recorded that the Deanery of Kenn ‘was the worst hit deanery in the whole of England. It lost 86 incumbents from its seventeen churches in those years (1349-51)’. The highest population figure was 381 in 1831, dropping to 225 in 1951; the provisional figure for 1991 is 328.
The oldest dwellings in the village include Stapley Cottage, built by Simon Tapley who probably in 1628; Glebe Cottage was granted by a deed of enfeoffment under the name of Church House, dated 14th of August 1625 to Thomas Harte; it was a poorhouse from 1628 to 1635 and was later a school. Feoffee Cottage is of the same period. Cherry Trees (‘deeds said to date from 1625’) and Wayland Cottage are early seventeenth century, the Royal Oak was built later in the same century, Longbarn in the eighteenth. Other dwellings in the parish beyond the village are older; Hestow appears in a tax roll of 1238, Well and Holdridge have already been mentioned, Underhayes was a mediaeval farm in the ownership of Torre Abbey, though the present building is largely of the seventeenth century.
The name of the village, often misspelt and mispronounced today, appears in a score of different forms in the course of the centuries, from Yudaforda in the Domesday Book, Iddyford in 1291, Yeddeforde in an archdeacon’s visitation of 1342, Eddeforde on the paten of 1576 and so to its present form.
A great part of the information in this brief account is taken from the short history of Ideford prepared by the Revd H F Fulford Williams, Rector from 1946-57, with additional information from papers in the West Country Studies Library and from the revised Notes (1976) on Listed Buildings.