Entry from White's Devonshire 1878:
BICKINGTON is a parish in Newton Abbot union. Newton Abbot and Torquay county court district, Teignbridge petty sessional division and hundred, Eastern division of the county, Totnes archdeaconry and Moreton rural deanery. It had 263 inhabitants (128 males, 135 females) in 1871, living in 56 houses, on 1375 acres of land. The name of the parish was anciently written Bichentone or Buketon. The village is seated on the banks of the Lemon rivulet, and on the Exeter Road, 3 miles N. of Ashburton, and 4 miles from Newton Abbot. In the reign of Edward the Confessor, the manor belonged to Brictric, the son of Algar, and was granted by the Conqueror to Queen Matilda, on whose death it reverted to the Crown. Henry II. bestowed it upon Sir Joel Giffard, who assumed the name of Bickington. The heiress of Sir Joel Bickington, in the reign of Edward III., took the manor to the Marwoods, and a co-heiress of this family took it, in the reign of Elizabeth, to the Wichalses, but the manor was dismembered many years ago, perhaps in the middle of the 16th century. The soil belongs to various freeholders; the Wrigwell estate has been held by the Bickford family for more than 600 years. The CHURCH (St. Mary) consists of chancel, nave, north aisle, south porch, and west tower containing three bells. The church is in the Perpendicular style, and had formerly a parclose, and also a Galilee chapel. In the interior are monuments of the Bickford family. The Register commences in 1603. The living, a vicarage, was formerly united to that of Ashburton, but was separated therefrom in 1861, by the patrons, the Dean and Chapter of Exeter. The Rev. William Smith is the incumbent. There is neither glebe nor parsonage house. The tithes are commuted–the vicarial for £222, and the rectorial for £115. The Dean and Chapter of Exeter are the appropriators of the latter, and Mr. Richard Skinner is the lessee. The WESLEYANS have a small chapel here. The CHURCH SCHOOL was built in 1848, by the Rev. R. P. Cornish, late curate of this parish. The poor have £2 a year from Plymouth Corporation, as the gift of Benjamin Baron ; and a small gift of 10s., ' Skinner's Gift,' administered by the Charity Commissioners.
POST through Newton Abbot.
